Art in the Architecture: Exploring Hermon MacNeil’s enduring contribution to SLAM

“Art in the Architecture” is a 1 Fine Arts Blog series dedicated to the ornamental details on the Saint Louis Art Museum’s Main Building, which was designed by Cass Gilbert for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In 1904, it was flanked by sprawling temporary wings that together formed the Palace of Fine Arts, which presented fairgoers with approximately 11,000 works of art from 26 countries. It is the sole surviving building from the World’s Fair. 

Eight works by American sculptor Hermon MacNeil (1866–1947) were featured in the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Ironically, the most inconspicuously placed of MacNeil’s sculptures for the fair became his most enduring. 

On the north façade of the Saint Louis Art Museum, built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1904 Word’s Fair, is MacNeil’s plaster relief, a two-dimensional sculpture with three-dimensional components. Ars Artium Omnium (Apotheosis of Art), is a series of three panels above the Museum’s main entrance. Originally crafted from plaster, the relief was later carved in stone and embellished with a gold mosaic background thanks to funds generously provided by the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company of 1913. The work was inspired by ancient and Renaissance art; 11 feminine figures stand together, turned inward toward the central form which MacNeil described as an apotheosis.

Allegories for the city’s attributes flank the central figure on both sides. On the right panel, the figures represent sculpture, painting, and music. The fourth figure on the right can go by any name, according to MacNeil. On the left are the allegories for architecture and the allied arts: ceramic and archaeology. On the middle panel, immediately to the central figure’s right and left side, are representations of the beauty of St. Louis. 

Born on the East Coast, MacNeil developed his artistic style through an interest in the culture of Native Americans in the late 1800s. His fascination with their traditions, their land west of the Mississippi, and their treatment by the government encouraged the artist to travel west. There, he studied various cultures, specifically of the Hopi in Arizona, according to Shaping the American West: American Sculptors of the 19th Century. This period allowed him to sculpt with extreme ethnographic detail, which led to an increase MacNeil’s reputation as an artist.

After gaining local recognition and receiving the prestigious William H. Rinehart scholarship, a fund that subsidized European study for young American sculptors, MacNeil moved to Rome to study art. This prompted the creation of his signature style at the time: a unique combination of primitivism and classicism, according to former SLAM curator Andrew Walker in Shaping the American West: American Sculptors of the 19th Century. This blend of styles was prevalent in the works he sculpted for the 1904 World’s Fair. 

Another MacNeil sculpture featured in the fair was Physical Liberty, a life-sized recreation of a young man holding a spear, running alongside a charging buffalo. According to Shaping the American West, the sculpture emphasized MacNeil’s harmful, commonly held belief of “assimilation rather than extinction” regarding Native Americans. Physical Liberty was an allegory for the triumph, joy, and liberty felt by the nation after acquiring the Louisiana Purchase territory, a prevalent theme in his practice. Like most sculptures for the fair, it was made of plaster and most likely destroyed afterward.