The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/9/07 Section: Variety

Media Credit: FILE PHOTO An iron horse sculpted in the 1950s by Abbott Pattison has a history of controversy with University students.

He stood silently in the Reed quadrangle as students threw hay and manure at him, and proceeded to build a bonfire under him and lit it.

Shortly afterward, the notorious iron horse sculpted by then artist-in-residence Abbott Pattison disappeared.

In reality, the sculpture was removed in 1954 by the University to a farm about 20 miles south of Athens in reaction to what former Alumni Association Tour Director Claude McBride described as "a near riot."

Why did students react so violently to this piece of art over 50 years ago?

Though much of the national media at the time said students were reacting negatively to modern art, McBride thinks differently.

"They were really reacting to the artist," he said.

Sculptor Pattison wrote a letter to The Red & Black on March 26, 1954, criticizing the University for a lack of culture and academic focus.

"Doesn't it seem a strange situation that a nearly last place basketball team should play to a full house while Shakespeare and excellent opera performances have no appeal?" he wrote. "It appears that the athletic and social activities have overwhelmed the real reason and justification for a University."

Students were livid.

"I thought he was being very arrogant and judgmental, and he didn't know the facts," McBride said. "For him to blast us, we felt was completely inappropriate."

Senior Holly Kovacs, an art education major from Atlanta, said she learned the reason for the unrest was students' distaste for the sculpture, not the sculptor.

"It just didn't look right," she said.

Now, passersby can see the horse standing in a field off Highway 15 in Greene County.

"The horse stands very proudly along the Oconee River," McBride said, "like he's a sentinel guarding that hill country."

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