The family of late Utah sculptor Avard Fairbanks literally made a "monumental" donation last week to George Washington University - a huge bronze bust of the first president.
Ceremonies dedicated the bust plus an identical replica as artistic monuments to mark the boundaries of the urban college that is otherwise nearly hidden among surrounding office buildings."Father made it as his tribute to the bicentennial in 1976," said Jonathan Fairbanks, a son of the sculptor and curator of American Decorative Arts at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "He was 79 years old at the time."
The younger Fairbanks said his father studied a variety of portraits made of Washington in his lifetime before making the statue to show Washington's strength and hope for the future of the country.
Ira Telford, a medical professor emeritus at the George Washington University Medical School and a friend of Avard Fairbanks, noted that the sculptor had a doctorate in anatomy as well as degrees in art.
Telford said he would sometimes watch as Fairbanks put each muscle in clay on a sculpture in its correct place and then placed a thin layer of skin over it. "Like Michelangelo and Leondardo da Vinci, his work was based on anatomy."
University President Joel Trachtenberg noted the bust is just one of many monuments that Fairbanks has in Washington.
"He created numerous statues of Abraham Lincoln, three of which are exhibited in Ford's Theater," he said. "He made the angel Moroni topping the Washington Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
Fairbanks also has four statues in the U.S. Capitol: one of Lincoln; one of Northwest explorer Marcus Whitman, representing Washington state; one of Wyoming suffragette Esther Hobart Morris; and one of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Burke.
Avard Fairbanks has more than 100 sculptures that are monuments to historical figures.