Did you know that the Samek has over 300 artworks from our collection on display around campus? Last Thursday, in conjunction with Staff Appreciation Week, I had the opportunity to lead a walking tour highlighting 6 such sculptures. Several of these pieces should be familiar faces to those who are acquainted with Bucknell’s campus, for example, the 3-ton marble piece outside the uphill entrance to the ELC or the affable Bucknell Bison on Moore Avenue. Others, however, may have snuck by your notice–have you ever looked up upon entering the Weis Center and seen the silently drifting black-and-red aluminum mobile suspended from the ceiling? What about stepped out of the back doors of the Rooke Science Center and checked out the two large marble slabs into which scientific equations are carved?
In the course of researching and writing this tour, I uncovered a number of interesting facts about the art from our collection placed around Bucknell’s campus. That 3-ton marble piece? The artist, Jay Dugan, asked that a scholarship be created in lieu of payment; the appraised value of the work was invested in Bucknell’s endowment and annually provides approximately $40,000 for financial aid. Since its establishment in 1988, the scholarship has provided financial support for 33 students to attend Bucknell. The mobile in the Weis Center? It was made by Robert Perless, who was inspired to create it after spending 2 years sailing from Nova Scotia to the Caribbean; he aimed to make visual the quiet, manipulative power of the wind and the air around us.
The tour certainly opened my eyes to a few of the treasures on campus and aided in my appreciation of them; I hope that there will be more occasions in the future to give and expand this tour, allowing more people to learn about the art which surrounds them, perhaps unnoticed–all while savoring a leisurely stroll around campus.