Alan LeQuire | |
|---|---|
 Alan LeQuire at the bottom of his replica of Phidias' Athena Parthenos in Nashville. | |
| Born | 1955 Nashville, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Vanderbilt University University of North Carolina at Greensboro |
| Occupation | Sculptor |
| Parent | Virgil LeQuire |
Alan LeQuire (born 1955) is an American sculptor from Nashville, Tennessee. Many of his sculptures are installed in the city.
Alan LeQuire was born in 1955. His father, Virgil, was a physician and researcher on the faculty of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. His mother, Louise, was a painter, art teacher, and writer. The young LeQuire showed an early interest in sculpture. While an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he studied independently under professor of sculpture Puryear Mims and Middle Tennessee State University sculptor Jim Gibson. He spent his senior year in France, studied art history, and earned a degree in English. After a year in Rome learning bronze casting as an assistant to New York City artist Milton Hebald, LeQuire entered the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.
LeQuire specializes in work of great scale, usually large public commissions. His most famous work is the replica of Phidias' Athena Parthenos that stands in the naos of the full-scale reconstruction of the Acropolis Parthenon in Nashville's Centennial Park. This statue, cast in a composite of gypsum and fiberglass on a steel and aluminum armature, is currently the largest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western World, standing almost 42 feet (13 m) tall. LeQuire received the commission for the work in 1982, and it was unveiled in 1990 in a stark, white finish. In 2002, LeQuire oversaw a polychroming and gilding process that brought the statue to an appearance close to what ancient Greek visitors may have seen at the original Parthenon.[ citation needed ]
In 1997 LeQuire created a sculptural group of life-size portraits of Tennessee women's suffrage activists Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Lizzie Crozier French. The sculpture is on display in Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee and is known as the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial. [1] LeQuire also created a large bronze relief for the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville dedicated to the Women's Rights Movement and commemorating passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920—Tennessee was the 36th state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, thus making it part of the U.S. Constitution.
Another large-scale work is Musica , a bronze statue grouping unveiled in 2003 that sits in a grassy knoll at the center of Buddy Killen Circle, a roundabout where Division Street meets 17th Avenue South in the Music Row area of Nashville. Musica is over 40 feet (12 m) tall, and consists of nine colossal nude figures, male and female, dancing in a circle. It is the largest bronze figure group in the United States.
LeQuire is also a portrait sculptor.
Other works by LeQuire include:
LeQuire was a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellow in 1986, and received a Tennessee Governor's Citation in 1987. In 1990 he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Design Award for Athena Parthenos.
The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art, and the Parthenon is considered an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy, and Western civilization.
Phidias or Pheidias was an Ancient Greek sculptor, painter, and architect, active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon, and the Athena Promachos, a colossal bronze which stood between it and the Propylaea, a monumental gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Phidias was the son of Charmides of Athens. The ancients believed that his masters were Hegias and Ageladas.
The statue of Athena Parthenos was a monumental chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess Athena. Attributed to Phidias and dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it was an offering from the city of Athens to Athena, its tutelary deity. The naos of the Parthenon on the acropolis of Athens was designed exclusively to accommodate it.
Musica is a bronze statue that sits upon a grassy knoll in Nashville, Tennessee, at the center of a traffic rotary where the confluence of Division Street and 16th Avenue North happens, known as the Music Row Roundabout or Buddy Killen Circle.
The Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition was an exposition held in Nashville from May 1 – October 31, 1897 in what is now Centennial Park. A year late, it celebrated the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the union in 1796. President William McKinley officially opened the event from the White House, where he pressed a button that started the machinery building at the fair; he would visit in person a month later.
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
Centennial Park is a large urban park located approximately two miles west of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, United States, across West End Avenue from the campus of Vanderbilt University. The 21st-century headquarters campus of the Hospital Corporation of America was developed adjacent to the park.
The Parthenon in Centennial Park, Nashville, Tennessee, United States, is a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens, Greece. It was designed by architect William Crawford Smith and built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition.
Chryselephantine sculpture is a sculpture made with gold and ivory. Chryselephantine cult statues enjoyed high status in Ancient Greece.
Enid Yandell was an American sculptor from Louisville, Kentucky, who studied with Auguste Rodin in Paris, Philip Martiny in New York City, and Frederick William MacMonnies.
The Athena Promachos was a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias, which stood between the Propylaea and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Athena was the tutelary deity of Athens and the goddess of wisdom and warriors. Pheidias also sculpted two other figures of Athena on the Acropolis, the huge gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") cult image of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon and the Lemnian Athena.
George Julian Zolnay was a Romanian, Hungarian, and American sculptor called the "sculptor of the Confederacy".
Anne Dallas Dudley was an American activist in the women's suffrage movement. She was a national and state leader in the fight for women's suffrage who worked to secure the ratification of the 19th Amendment in Tennessee.
Belle Marshall KinneyScholz (1890–1959) was an American sculptor, born in Tennessee who worked and died in New York state.
The War Memorial Auditorium is a 2,000-seat performance hall located in Nashville, Tennessee. Built in 1925, it served as home of the Grand Ole Opry between 1939 and 1943. It is also known as the War Memorial Building, the Tennessee War Memorial, or simply the War Memorial. It is located across the street from, and is governed by, the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, and is also adjacent to the Tennessee State Capitol. It received an architectural award at the time of its construction, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017.
Abby Crawford Milton was an American suffragist and supercentenarian. She was the last president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association. She traveled throughout Tennessee making speeches and organizing suffrage leagues in small communities. In 1920, she, along with Anne Dallas Dudley and Catherine Talty Kenny, led the campaign in Tennessee to approve ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. On August 18, Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the amendment, thereby giving women the right to vote throughout the country.
The Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial is located at Market Square in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It honors the women who campaigned for the state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to give women the right to vote. Tennessee was the final state to ratify the amendment and have it added to the Constitution, and thus was the focus of considerable effort both from local women and women who travelled from other states to assist them. The ratification vote was passed on August 18, 1920.
Margriet Windhausen is a New Zealand sculptor and painter.
A bronze statue of the Confederate soldier Sam Davis was installed in 1999 at Nashville, Tennessee's Montgomery Bell Academy, in the United States. The sculpture was designed by the local artist Alan LeQuire. Davis had been an student at the Western Military Institute, a predecessor of the Montgomery Bell Academy.
The Women's Rights Pioneers Monument is a sculpture by Meredith Bergmann. It was installed in Central Park, Manhattan, New York City, on August 26, 2020. The sculpture is located at the northwest corner of Literary Walk along The Mall, the widest pedestrian path in Central Park. The sculpture commemorates and depicts Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902), pioneers in the suffrage movement who advocated women's right to vote and who were pioneers of the larger movement for women's rights.