It’s The Lincoln Memorial’s Centennial: Time To Honor Daniel Chester French
This summer the Lincoln Memorial is celebrating its 100th anniversary. While the iconic statue of President Abraham Lincoln, seated in the weight of contemplation, is one of America’s most indelible symbols, little is publicly said about its sculptor. Daniel Chester French, who lived and worked here in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. French’s home and studio, Chesterwood, a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is highlighting its summer-long centennial celebration of the Memorial with the premiere of the first documentary ever made on French and the statue.
Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker Eduardo Montes-Bradley of the Heritage Film Project, "Daniel Chester French: American Sculptor" will introduce the public to Chesterwood, the summer home, studio and gardens of the sculptor from 1896 to 1931. The film is set to premiere on May 26 at 7 p.m. at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington as part of several nation-wide centennial commemorative events. The screening will be followed by a scholarly panel discussion and a benefit dessert reception. Tickets to both the screening and reception are on sale at www.mahaiwe.org.
The sculptor's studio
Montes-Bradley is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and a founding member of the Heritage Film Project, a production company located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the past 30 years he has produced and directed more than 50 documentary films.
“When I was approached by Dan Preston and Michael Richman, editors of the Daniel Chester French papers, with the idea of making a documentary, I had only a vague idea of who he was. I was familiar with most of French’s work, but little did I know about the man behind the monuments,” said Montes-Bradley. “As with many sculptors, French’s name was living under the shadow of his accomplishments, many of which have had major historical implications.”
The film will be the first-ever documentary to focus on French, including his formative years studying with May Alcott, his neighbor in Concord, MA; apprenticing with American sculptor Thomas Ball in Florence, Italy; establishing a studio in Greenwich Village; and then finding his true creative home at Chesterwood, where he built the complex he fondly referred to as “six months in heaven.” The film will look at the aesthetic and political significance of the Lincoln Memorial as well as French’s hundreds of other public sculptures, such as the Minute Man in Concord, MA, the John Harvard at Harvard University, the Alma Mater at Columbia University, the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial on Fifth Avenue in New York City, the General George Washington on the Place d’Iléna in Paris, and many more.
The documentary will be entered into several independent film competitions and after its official premiere it will be distributed through Kanopy, a video streaming service available (often for free) through libraries and universities locally and worldwide.
Immediately following the film screening, Montes-Bradley will be joined by Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer and American art scholar Dr. Thayer Tolles to discuss the film. Holzer is the author of Monument Man: The Life and Art of Daniel Chester French and a leading authority on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. Dr. Tolles is the Marcia F. Vilcek Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she served as editor and co-author of a two-volume catalogue of the Museum’s historic American sculpture collection.
“The seated Lincoln has been the backdrop of American history,” said Margaret Cherin, Chesterwood's senior site manager. “It’s a serious monument. This is the president grappling with the war and a divided nation.”
Chesterwood will also be celebrating the centennial of the dedication of the Lincoln Memoria at a Memorial Day event Monday, May 30 from noon to 3 p.m. The historic studio at Chesterwood, which displays the original six-foot model of the seated Lincoln, will be open for touring along with the permanent collections, formal gardens, and woodland walks. Family-friendly activities will include live music by the Berkshire Jazz Collective, a special Lincoln tour, and readings from the dedication event 100 years ago.
"Lincoln Illustrated," an exhibition on display at Chesterwood’s neighboring Norman Rockwell Museum is also honoring the Lincoln Memorial’s centennial through the summer. The exhibition will highlight the work of illustrators and artists who have incorporated the Lincoln Memorial into their art as a symbolic element. The show runs through September 4.
This feels like a serendipitous time for reflection on the Lincoln Memorial statue. America feels more ideologically fractured than any period since Reconstruction. For those who hope for a peaceful future, the expression of complex and conflicting emotions French captured in the face and body language of Lincoln is all too recognizable. Lincoln is clearly tired—sorrowful even, his marble brow furrowed in thought, clearly searching for a solution to our nation’s social divisions. And we are still searching.
While the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of the American ideal, the goal of a perfect union, the Lincoln Monument represents the endless, likely impossible, struggle to attain it. Visit Chesterwood this summer for moving programing that explores the mind and process of the artist who captured, in stone, the complexity of what it truly means to be American.
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