25th Anniversary: Don Bartlett designed, built and transported Media’s People to UF.
What a long, strange trip it’s been for the College’s centerpiece sculpture
By Ralph Lowenstein
The five individuals in Media’s People, Weimer Hall’s centerpiece sculpture, were embryos 25 years ago. That’s when artist Don Bartlett and I conceived them.
Believe me, their birth was anything but immaculate. In fact, their gestation period, as well as their unveiling, turned out to be quite controversial.
When we started building Weimer Hall in 1978, the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation contributed $21,000 for atrium curbing, irrigation, benches, and art. We sought an artist to translate our somewhat grandiose theme, “the history of mass communications,” into an attractive, affordable sculpture.
When no University of Florida artist bid on the project, I turned to Bartlett, then chair of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Art. I taught there for eight years before coming to UF and liked his large works at banks and public buildings. He agreed to produce a sculpture during his forthcoming sabbatical year, 1979-80.
Bartlett sent me photos of half a dozen concepts he molded in wax. What I knew about art could fit on the wet tip of a watercolor brush, but I chose a piece after discarding the ones that featured extensions remotely resembling sexual body parts.
My first shock came when three UF Advertising Department faculty members returned from a University of Missouri convention. They visited Bartlett’s garage to see him construct Media’s People and returned laughing. Based on their reconnaissance, the faculty named the unfinished sculpture “Lowenstein’s Folly.”
After we moved from the Stadium into Weimer in 1980, Bartlett arrived with a U-Haul containing Media’s People in two parts. As he put it together atop a platform in the atrium, I withheld judgment. Others did not. One student said, “Dean Lowenstein, this is the ugliest sculpture I have ever seen.” I would have gladly kept her from graduating had I had that power.
That same week, the Alligator published its latest expose: I had a conflict of interest in hiring Bartlett since our sons had been in the same Cub Scout den (I am not making this up).
Years passed. I discovered to my satisfaction that students liked Media’s People, which depicts a mother, father and two children shielded by the traditional eight-column newspaper, facing two communications students standing before a six-column newspaper evolving into satellite disks.
Many of you have had your photos taken in front of the sculpture at our graduation reception. Media’s People became an icon, gracing many of our brochures. It even appeared on UF-wide publicity material.
It hit the big time when BellSouth featured it on the cover of its 1987-88 Gainesville phone book. Herb Press, MAJC 1982, of UF News and Public Affairs shot the photo for the telecommunication giant.
When a BellSouth vice president showed up a few months later with the new book, Press returned to document the presentation. The veteran photographer gasped when he looked at the cover, “What have they done to my picture?”
BellSouth artists had airbrushed a palm leaf to cover the fully clothed figures. The vice president said, “Some of our executives in Miami were afraid there would be complaints because the mother’s breasts are too prominent.”
Where was BellSouth during the Super Bowl halftime show?
A few years ago, the College commissioned an artist to create a First Amendment interpretation. When the four-panel piece appeared on the atrium’s north wall, it, too, quickly gave rise to controversy.
A Gainesville Sun reporter sought my opinion. I asked if he viewed the panels. He said yes. “When anyone puts a work of art into a void, everyone becomes a critic,” I said. “Our sculpture in the center of the atrium was also controversial when it was erected.”
“What sculpture?” he said. “I don’t remember seeing anything there.”
Ralph Lowenstein served as dean of the College from 1976 to 1994.
