Abstract This article presents the history of the formation of the plaster cast collection at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and documents the central role that John Milton Gregory (the first Regent of the University) played in its inception. By examining the impetus behind Gregory's decision to amass a collection of “antiquities” at the newly formed land-grant institution, and others’ subsequent reactions to it, I will consider the role of classical reproductions in the diffusion of “Taste’” within nineteenth-century Illinois.
Abstract This work investigates how early engagement with Greco-Roman antiquity shaped the political theories and actions of William Kent, Chicago alderman and later prominent congressman for California. Although Kent is well known for his congressional anti-immigration sentiments, this article shows that these ideas were taking shape earlier in his life, when they were formed and articulated through an engagement with Greco-Roman antiquity that fundamentally affected his decision to build a classically inspired social club known as the Forum in Chicago in 1897. Finally, this work considers how the imagery on the Forum's stage curtain may have complicated Kent's intended message.
Abstract This article examines the Athena of the Portland Cement Association Safety Trophy (1924), an Art Deco monument erected in dozens of American industrial towns to honor cement plants that achieved outstanding workplace safety records. Designed by Ruth Sherwood, a Chicago-based artist trained at the Art Institute and later married to the renowned Czech American sculptor Albin Polasek, the trophy depicts the goddess Athena guiding a heroically nude male laborer beneath the motto “Safety Follows Wisdom.” Drawing on the frameworks of Edith Hall and Henry Stead for class-conscious classical reception and Caroline Winterer's account of American classicism's simultaneous elitism and broad diffusion, the article analyzes the trophy through three considerations: the socio-economic class of the workers whose safety it commemorated, the gendered dynamics of a female artist depicting a goddess alongside a male laborer, and the particular circumstances of Sherwood's own life and career. The article argues that the trophy both enacts and complicates the “bifurcation into highbrow and lowbrow” characteristic of American classical reception, presenting workers with an image that oscillates between corporate ideology and genuine democratic aspiration. A final speculative reading suggests that the monument may function as a double portrait of Sherwood and Polasek, encoding a personal devotion within a public commission.
Abstract This article traces the reference to the Gorgon in Orestes to its earlier invocations in the Oresteia and Euripides's Electra, arguing that it captures the problematic nature of vengeance in the play. It highlights the significance of Orestes's sword as a prop and proposes that Orestes identifies his weapon with Medusa, appropriating the Perseus imagery of the Choephoroi and Electra to present himself as a successful avenger. It aims to show that by reconfiguring the Aeschylean symbolism of the Gorgon, Euripides exposes the illegitimacy and failure of Orestes's revenge against Helen, encapsulating the play's ambiguity of action and escalating violence.
