Stella Elkins Tyler A Legacy Born of Bronze
Stella
Elkins Tyler
A Legacy Born of Bronze
September 1-November 20, 2004
Catalogue Available at Hicks Art Center or by mail (Excerpt)
80 pp., 8 ½ x 11, 72 color illustrations, appendix
about the author and exhibition director
For information, please call 215-504-8531
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of Bucks County Community
College, we are proud to present a major exhibition of sculpture by Stella
Elkins Tyler. This show was curated by Fran Orlando and is accompanied
by a full-color catalogue authored by Dr. Roberta A. Mayer.
Bucks County Community College was founded in 1964 on the former estate of George and Stella Elkins Tyler, a property in Newtown, Pennsylvania, of grand architectural designs and formal gardens. At that time, many of Stella Tyler’s bronze sculptures remained on the site and thus became part of the College’s art collection.
Tyler
was almost fifty years old when she began to work as a serious sculptor
in the early 1930s. Her mentor was Boris Blai, a former student of the
famous French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. She had her first solo exhibition
of sculpture at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City in 1935.
In 1959, the Woodmere Art Gallery in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, hosted
her third and last such show. Over the course of these two-and-a-half
decades, she displayed approximately one-hundred-and-fifty different
sculptural designs, most relatively small, but some close to life-size.
Eventually, she had nearly all of her compositions cast into bronze by
the Roman Bronze Works, a major foundry located in Corona, New York.
The vast majority of her bronzes are one of a kind.
The
exhibition takes place at the College from September 1-November 20, 2004,
and is spread across the campus in three different venues. A collection
of both small and large bronzes, some privately owned, is on view at
the Hicks Art Center Gallery. Tyler’s large outdoor bronzes owned
by the College are on permanent display in the gardens and in front of
the Gateway Center. At the Library, the process of making bronze sculpture
is presented in the context of Timeless Offerings, a contemporary
piece done as an homage to Tyler. Also on view in the Library are
several of Tyler’s plaster models, together with some fascinating
primary documents that were discovered during the research process
Tyler had always had strong connections to the cultural life of Philadelphia
and New York, and, as an heiress of Gilded-Age fortune, she also had the
means to pursue her interests. It was, however, not until after she
began to create sculpture that she thought about becoming a philanthropist. Ultimately,
Tyler donated two of her estates with the intention of creating educational
institutions. In 1935, her first home in Elkins Park, known as Georgian
Terrace, became the Stella Elkins Tyler School of Fine Arts of Temple University. Upon
her death, her second home in Newtown, christened Indian Council Rock, was
willed to Temple University. This property was quickly sold and laid
the foundations for the opening of Bucks County Community College in 1964. The
purpose and pleasure that Tyler found in her sculpture has had its most powerful
legacy in the tens of thousands of students who have been able to discover
their own creative abilities as a result of her generosity. And that
The Stella Elkins Tyler: A Legacy Born of Bronze exhibition and catalogue have been supported by grants from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Additional support was provided by the Bucks County Community College Committee on Cultural Programming and the Bucks County Community College Foundation.
