Art in the Architecture: Revisiting the inscriptions on SLAM’s north and south facades

“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, the building 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. 

During construction of the Palace of Fine Arts, now home to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the building was inscribed with two evergreen quotations, buttressed by now century-old limestone columns.

“Dedicated to Art and Free to All”

“Art Still Has Truth, Take Refuge There”

Architect Cass Gilbert was eager to provide the citizens of St. Louis with an art building in which they could take great pride. He designed a Beaux-Arts-style building atop the hill at the heart of Forest Park, intended to sequester visitors once inside, leaving them to contemplate the art on view. 

Halsey Ives, the director of the Saint Louis Museum of Fine Arts, the institution which moved its collection into the Palace of Fine Arts and eventually became the Saint Louis Art Museum, worked closely with Gilbert. The two men harbored “contrasting philosophies about the role of art museums,” according to Cass Gilbert’s Career in New York, 1899–1905 by art history scholar Sharon Lee Irish. Gilbert viewed the exterior of the building as a monument for the city, while the interior was intended to be strictly a sanctuary for individuals who were prepared to appreciate the masterful work on view. Ives believed the Museum should be a space for all people to experience all art forms, regardless of one’s knowledge of fine arts. 

After years of disagreements regarding the Main Building, the contentious duo agreed to carve two quotations into the limestone, one on the north facade and one on the south. Despite their differing opinions on the societal role of art museums, Gilbert wanted the building itself to appeal to everyone. On the north side, six Corinthian columns support a long, thin stone tablet inscribed with, “Dedicated to Art and Free to All.” Following the quote, the year 1903 is carved in roman numerals. According to Irish, Ives believed that “art museums are the people’s, and for the people.”

Because Gilbert insisted upon symmetry in the design of the Palace of Fine Arts, an identical colonnade decorates the south entrance, as well. The phrase “Art Still Has Truth, Take Refuge There” is engraved into the stone. This quote is borrowed from “Memorial Verses, April 1850,” an elegy by Victorian writer Matthew Arnold, lamenting the death of William Wordsworth, one of the great romantic poets: 

He look’d on Europe’s dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said: The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness. 

(Arnold, “Memorial Verses, April 1850,” stanza 4)