Restoration Efforts Underway for Historic Gallaudet Sculpture

By Katherine Delorenzo

Thomas and Alice get a cleaning (and a cooling off) as part of the Save Outdoor Sculpture! program which commenced last month.

Gallaudet’s fabled Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell sculpture, which has faced the University’s Chapel Hall since 1889, recently underwent a conservation and restoration treatment thanks to an award granted by Save Outdoor Sculpture! (SOS!), a national program which works to ensure the preservation of public sculpture. The $5,000 award gives Gallaudet University an opportunity to consult with conservation professionals and provides assistance with maintenance, cleaning, and restoration of the University's best-known historic statue.

The maintenance work is being performed by Shelley Sturman, an object conservator, who will clean the sculpture of corrosion and restore the surface. Overseeing the project is Larry Ott, director the Physical Plant Department. Announced in 1998 at a special ceremony attended by First Lady (and soon to be senator) Hillary Rodham Clinton as part of the White House Millenium Council’s Save America’s Treasures, the program seeks to preserve outdoor public sculpture endangered by weather, vandalism, and age. "It is an example of how we can rededicate ourselves to preserving what is best about America," said Clinton. "It is up to all of us to preserve our heritage."

The sculpture was created in 1889 by Daniel Chester French, the nineteenth century sculptor who also created the Abraham Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and The Minute Man in Concord, Massachussetts. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet shows the young Connecticut clergyman teaching the manual alphabet letter 'A' to nine-year-old Alice Cogswell, his first deaf student. The sculpture's site underwent a landscaping facelift last summer.

This pilot program is part of the White House Millenium Council's 'Save America's Treasures' tour, a private-public inititiative devoted to the preservation of outdoor sculptures and monuments with historical and cultural significance. In addition to support from Target Stores, the SOS! 2000 program is a joint project of the National Museum of American Arts, Smithsonian Institution, and Heritage Preservation.