Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Augustus Saint-Gaudens's Memorial to Colonel Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth

I loved the movie Glory - it circuitously started my membership in the Milwaukee Civil War round table. I read all about Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, saw his papers at the Harvard Houghton Library, and visited the memorial sculpture of the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth regiment near the Boston Common. But I was always interested in history and declared it as my major in it in college - until I switched to nursing with the idea I needed a job. Regardless, most of our trips were planned around historical places. So when we started our usual walk this morning toward the mall, we were trying to figure out where to stop for lunch. It would be the National Gallery of Art cafeteria this time. But before we left, I wanted to check out the plaster cast of the Augustus Saint-Gauden's Memorial. So we headed to the main gallery and found the imposing structure. Around the gallery were sketches and studies for the heads of the soldiers, and a bit of a history lesson. The colonel was only twenty-five years old when he met his demise, and he and the regiment had a major impact on the conflict. I don't particularly care for art museums that much, but this was worth the visit.












No comments:

Post a Comment