The Gift
Avrum Gray chuckles as he recalls how often he interacted with fine art as a Purdue mechanical engineering student in the 1950s. “I would say on a scale of zero to 100, probably pretty close to zero,” says Gray (BSME ’56), a Chicago businessman.
That is changing for future generations of Purdue students, thanks in large part to his recent donation of 74 sculptures cast at the Valsuani Foundry in 1997 and 1998 based on the works of French Impressionist Edgar Degas. The collection includes a bronze cast after La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen) one of the artist’s signature creations and most iconic works, and the only sculptural work ever exhibited by the artist.
“This would be a significant contribution to most museums or collections,” says Arne Flaten, head of the Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance and professor of art history. “And for us it’s a game-changer.” According to Flaten, these sculptures easily rank among the most significant items in Purdue’s collection.
“This gift is transformational for Purdue Galleries and for this University,” says David A. Reingold, Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “We now have among the most comprehensive collections of bronzes based on Degas’ original wax models in the country. It elevates the permanent collection and the significance of the arts at Purdue in a big way. We are excited to be able to share them with the entire Purdue community.”
Known primarily as a painter, Degas created 150 wax, clay, and plaster figures—depictions of dancers, horses, and studies of the human form, which were found in his studio when he died in 1917. In fact, the only figurine exhibited during his lifetime was a wax version of the “Little Dancer.”
Following Degas’ death, his heirs elected to commission bronzes of 73 of these small wax, clay, and plastiline figures plus the much-larger “Little Dancer,” which stands 39 inches high. In 1997, the Valsuani foundry in Paris created the bronze piece that Gray donated to Purdue. In 1998, Valsuani cast 29 bronze editions of the 73 smaller items that make up the remainder of this collection.
“Degas never cast them in bronze because he kept working on them as studies for himself, continuing to play with the wax to make little micro-adjustments, to use them as models for his own drawings and compositions,” Flaten says. “So, in a lot of ways, what we’re looking at are bronze representations of his working processes because the wax and clay studies from which these bronzes derive were clearly important enough to him to keep with him for his entire life.”
The original “Little Dancer” and other wax models found in Degas’ studio are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in the collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
The “Little Dancer” is among the most famous of Degas’ many works featuring his trademark subject matter, with the 14-year-old dancer shown wearing a sleeveless, buttoned bodice and cloth tutu. Rather than representing an exact depiction of this dancer, Flaten says, the sculpture was more concerned with pose and movement among commonplace subjects.
“If you’re familiar with Degas’ paintings, you’ll notice the same thing,” Flaten says. “He’s not trying to photographically represent what something looked like. He’s giving an impression of what something looked like. And that was a concern for many of the more avant-garde artists working in the latter decades of the 19th century, and which ultimately led to much of what happened in the 20th century.”
Purdue University Galleries is currently assembling plans to showcase the complete collection in one location for a full year. Identifying a space that is large enough to display all 74 pieces and available for an entire year is a complicated undertaking, but well worth the effort and appropriate for Purdue.
After all, there is ample evidence suggesting that the most successful scientists and technologists are also gifted creative artists.
In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, researchers from Michigan State University examined the backgrounds of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and members of the Royal Society and U.S. National Academy of Sciences and identified “very significant relationships between success as a scientist and evidence of adult arts and crafts avocations.” The researchers cited an additional study that “found that at least one persistent and intellectually stimulating hobby is a better predictor for career success in any discipline than IQ, standardized test scores, or grades.”
Their analysis indicates that the creativity and fertile imagination that allow one to excel in any artistic endeavor are also useful among those responsible for world-changing discoveries and innovations through their abilities to think broadly and boldly.
“At Purdue, one of the nation’s top producers of engineers, we see that these sculptures reflect the creative spark that results in true innovation,” says Reingold. “For Degas, the wax models were constantly evolving. He tinkered with them. In his lifetime, they were his tools of the trade, prototypes for his paintings that connect his process as a maker with the ways in which our students across the STEM disciplines create and develop new products in their fields. They open the door to another way of thinking, another manner in which we at Purdue can continue to evolve in preparing some of the most innovative future leaders in the world.”
Einstein played the violin. Galileo was a poet. Newton was both an artist and a poet. Kepler was an artist and musician. Einstein clearly believed in the value of such pursuits, writing in 1931, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”
Flaten says he and Erika Kvam, Purdue Galleries’ director and head curator, were cautiously excited when they first heard about what Gray had offered to donate. When Gray enlisted veteran New York appraiser and art dealer Alex J. Rosenberg to analyze the pieces, Flaten and Kvam were blown away by his expert opinion. Rosenberg valued Gray’s proposed donation at just over $21 million, with a market value of as much as $52 million.
This was not the first time that Gray has chosen to make a significant contribution to his alma mater. He and his late wife, Joyce, also made a gift to establish the Avrum and Joyce Gray Directorship in Purdue’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship.
In both cases, Gray was inspired to give back to Purdue because of the tools he sharpened in West Lafayette that helped him succeed after graduation. “I always felt that Purdue was very good to me in one way in particular: Purdue taught me a way to think,” Gray says. “It taught me a way to analyze problems. Really, an important thing for me was the ability to break up a problem into its pieces, analyze it, and come up with whatever answer you come up with.” Though Gray’s interest in and appreciation for art evolved after his days at Purdue, art has brought him great joy and he wants to share that with the Purdue community. “I want people to be able to come, see, enjoy and learn.”
That same desire compelled Gray to donate “Standing Woman,” an 11-foot, 2,000-pound piece by Colombian artist Fernando Botero, to the sculpture collection at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois. “I could keep these works in my home. But I believe art should be enjoyed by many and by sculptures to public institutions enables a great many people to see, study and enjoy.
Flaten says Purdue is still formulating a plan to display the Degas collection beyond the first year. However, the ultimate goal is for the “Little Dancer” to find a permanent home on campus “so that all Purdue students, faculty, and staff can see it all the time.”
That is very much in line with Gray’s wishes for the collection. Thanks to his generous donation, the Purdue community, as well as other individuals, will get an up-close look at the work of one of the most influential artists of the 19th century – an opportunity Gray never fathomed, much less realized, as a Boilermaker student.
“What I was hoping,” Gray says, “is they would put it on display, and that it would bring to students an additional perspective of life and art that you just don’t get when you’re looking at gears and pulleys.”
Writer: David Ching