2001 Achievement Award Winners
Seven outstanding preservation and public awareness projects were honored with an SOS! Achievement Award in November 2001. The fifth annual award program proved to be a challenging task for SOS! panelists. Each of the 26 nominees was unique in its efforts to increase awareness of and interest in preserving our national collection of outdoor sculpture. Colleges, high schools, elementary schools, television producers, churches, women’s organizations, and cities stretching from sea to sea were among the applicants. Of the seven award recipients, one received first-place honors of $1,000, two second-place winners were presented $750, and four received honorable mention awards of $500.
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The Hawai’i Alliance for Arts Education successfully rallied the citizens of Kapa’au around the preservation of King Kamehameha I (1880) by Thomas Ridgeway Gould. The town’s native son, originally gilt with gold, had been painted with vibrant colors for decades. When plans for conservation of the sculpture were first announced, the issue of whether to continue painting the sculpture or return it to its original appearance initiated a community-wide debate that was considered through multiple workshops, art projects, a video documentary, and finally resolved by a democratic vote. The consensus was to continue painting the sculpture. By June 11, 2001, both King Kamehameha Day and the rededication ceremony, no Kapa’au citizen was left untouched by the Alliance’s campaign to conserve the king. |
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Second-place award winner Girl Scout Troop #137 of Gloucester, Massachusetts, promoted the conservation of Joan of Arc (1921) by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Involved since the beginning, Troop #137 documented the assessment and conservation process, wrote letters to local newspapers, performed extensive research on the Gloucester citizens memorialized by the monument, and planned a rededication ceremony to coincide with the 80th anniversary of its original dedication. |
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Sharing the spotlight for second-place, The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio, has undertaken the conservation and maintenance of 13 sculptures located in the city-owned Fine Arts Garden. Staff also educated local school groups through sculpture tours, activity books, and original documents and photographs obtained from descendents of sculptors. |
Four projects were recognized with honorable mentions. The Center for Architecture & Building Science Research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology established the first high school program for preservation arts training at the Brooklyn High School for the Arts in 2000. Marcy Heller Fisher, author of The Outdoor Museum, introduces the sculpture of Marshall Fredericks, concentrated in Michigan, to children and their parents. The Wisconsin Arts Board developed the Conservation Initiative Program to assess more than 750 artworks across the state; over 30 percent are outdoor sculptures. Forest Hills Educational Trust preserved the cemetery’s most vulnerable sculptures by replacing them with faithful replicas and moving the originals to indoor exhibition space.
2000 Achievement Award Winners