Bette Davis Nude

There are times when I scare myself.
I was researching something or another the other day when I ran across a 1982 story in the NY Times about Bette Davis. She mentioned in it that she had posed nude for a statue when she was 18 and she knew it was in Boston somewhere.
She couldn't remember what it was called, nor the name of the sculptor, but it was a fountain piece.
I did the math.
Davis was born in 1908, which means the piece had to have been done in 1926-ish.
My instant response was "It must be the piece they took out of the Public Garden when the Beacon Hills mothers voiced a complaint to the city fathers."
That piece was done by one of my favorite early 20th century sculptors, Anna Coleman Ladd.
So I cracked open my archives and started hunting the photocopies until I came across the news article I was looking for.
"Nude Bronze Out of Garden- Five Figures in "Wind and Spray" too Revealing for Children to See, so Ban Order Comes." The headline blared out the news, and the picture of a dancing girl could have been Bette.

(Picture from libimages.wolfsonian.org)

Today, I continued my search.
I ran across a 1983 article from the Wilmington Star-Bulletin which said that the editor of Playboy, which had published her initial interview, sent the star a picture of that very fountain.
Davis fingered it as the one she was talking about! I was thrilled at my detective powers.
But wait!
Something, I thought sadly, didn't match up.
I knew that the piece had originally been shown at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the Palace of Fine Arts.
The year? 1915.
Either Bette's memory was faulty, or she was the most mature looking seven year old I'd ever seen.
Alas for me for not hitting it and alas for Bette for not remembering it. So, somewhere out there in the world of bronze, a nude Bette Davis cavorts in Boston.

Stripped Down in the Snow

So you take a life-sized statue of a nearly nude man and stand it upright in the snow next to a main road.
He's a fairly pudgy guy wearing only briefs, and his arms are stretched out before him. He definitely resembles a cross between a Hanes ad and a frat prank.
And he's standing in the snow on the Wellesley College Campus near Boston.

(Photo from gannett.cdn.com)

A prank? Non-news???
Apparently not. According to the local press, the students and some of the public are hashing out his meaning and appropriateness.
500 people signed a petition to have him removed. According to the petition initiators, the statue is “a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for some members of our campus community.”
At least one student felt that it would be more appropriate to erect a statue of a former president or cultural icon instead.
None of the critiques seem to focus on the skill of the artist, nor the quality of the piece.
According to the NY Times, the President of the college said that  “The community is debating everything from compassion to censorship, to freedom of expression and the significance of safe spaces,”.
The sculptor himself said that the piece, called "The Sleepwalker", is meant to arouse compassion for the outcast figure who is, apparently in some distress. It is also meant to draw attention to his show at the Davis Art Gallery on campus.
The piece is slated to stay in place until July, when, presumably, he will fit in with the community.
It is, once again, a case of concept v literalness.