[Music] hello I'm Wesley Payne Museum director of the Parthenon in Nashville Tennessee and today I want to talk to you about the history of our building Nashville's parthan is the only fullscale Recreation of the famous temple built to the goddess Athena in Athens Greece in the 5th Century BC the Athenians regarded Athena as their civic goddess the one to whom they looked for the health and prosperity of their city state and the ornamentation on the building reflects their attitude toward their goddess and also their attitude of their own prominence among Greek city states the building that we know as a beautiful ruin today was built at the instigation of the Athenian ruler Pericles following the final defeat of the Persians after 20 years of on and off Warfare Scholars and Architectural historians have long admired the Parthenon because of subtle adjustments the builders Incorporated it's wider and longer than the typical Doric Temple probably in order to house the enormous statue of the goddess Athena inside but it also merges the ionic and dork Styles also the horizontal lines all the way up the building are slightly bowed the walls and columns incline inward slightly and the largest diameter of the columns is about a third of the way up rather than at the base as you would expect and yet it looks perfect instead of odd the Parthenon is reflective of the Pinnacle of what we call the golden age of Greece and it is out of this short little time period 25 200 years ago that flowed such things as mathematical formulas philosophies literature and our system of government that we are still studying and using today most of Europe forgot about Greece in the mid 15th century Athens became part of the Ottoman Empire and the temple that was built to a Athena and later converted to a Christian Church became a Muslim mosque in 1687 an army from Venice threatened Athens and the ottoman soldiers stored their gunpowder inside the Parthenon which on September 26th took at least one hit Direct Hit and blew up even as a ruin the Parthenon was powerful European travelers to Italy in Greece from the 17th century to the 19th century published Illustrated books of their travels that fueled a passion for the ruins they praised the beauty of the ruins and people all of Europe became passionate and romantic about the ruins of Greece and Italy reverence for the neoclassical was prominent throughout the United States in Nashville settled by families who understood the value of Education the citizens as soon as their town was physically safe founded a university and education flourished here nashvillians became very proud of the nickname they'd acquired by the mid-9th century of Athens of the South and so it was entirely logical when the state of Tennessee decided to celebrate its 100th birthday of statehood with a big World's Fair type Exposition that Nashville would offer to build the art building and would build it as a copy of the parthona [Music] the Tennessee Centennial and international Exposition took place between May and October of 1897 the last Decades of the 19th century and the 1 of the 20th saw many such expositions all were vaguely neoclassical in architectural style and the most influential of these expositions was the 1893 world's col Ian Exposition in Chicago although all these expositions favored the neoclassical style Tennessee's Parthenon the art building was the only exact copy of a specific building from Antiquity nearly 2 million people visited the fair from May to October and that in an age when there was were far fewer Leisure Hours and far less discretionary income for people there there was a building to celebrate any area of life you can think of that Tennessee wanted to toot its [Music] horn almost all of these expositions were designed to boost the local economy where they were and most succeeded at that George Zol who had been the sculptor for the 1897 parthona that go around the Doric freeze of the parthona and Leopold Schultz a husband and wife sculpting team were hired to create the pediment sculptures that fit on the east and west ends of the building there was a great attention paid to accuracy to making this building as near as possible like its predecessor and so in the interests of that accuracy the city purchased from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London England a set of casts of the marble fragments that remain from the ancient Parthenon Kenny and Schultz used those casts and added clay where there was Miss material sculpted an entire figure of the composite plaster and clay and then made molds of those composite figures into which the concrete the finished concrete agregate was poured and those Figures were lifted up and put into position on the East and West [Music] pediments during the rebuilding a man named James M K Howen an art collector who lived near Chicago but who had grown up in Middle Tennessee heard about the rebuilding and offered to give part of his art collection to the city of Nashville to be housed at the parnon he went through his art dealer in New York and had two conditions to his gift first there had to be a secure Gallery inside the Parthenon for the collection and second he required to be anonymous until his death the city happily complied with his conditions and his collection arrived in three shipments one of 21 paintings in 1927 and two shipments of 21 paintings each in 1929 Mr Cowen died in December of 1930 and so he never saw his collection hanging at the Parthenon but when he died the collection was named for him and is on permanent [Music] exhibition [Music] because the building was not completed until 1931 when the world was fully into the Great Depression the sculptors and Architects desire and intent of completing the building with the addition of the ionic freeze on the outside and the enormous statue of Athena on the inside could not be realized they had a sketch Model A maette which was placed by the park board as a marker inside the naos in 1982 when the city finally was able to commission a sculptor to make the full-size Athena local sculptor Alan laire received that commission and the project took him nearly eight years he started with a on10th scale model then a 1if scale model after that he cut the model into to sections and for each section built a wood and chicken wire Armature onto which he put almost 4 tons of clay he would sculpt a section put plaster on to make molds remove those molds and spray the finished material which was a gypsum cement with chopped fiberglasses reinforcing into the molds then the clay was reused for the next section once all the molds had been used and all the pieces were completed they were brought to the Parthenon where a steel Armature that begins at Bedrock goes up through the gallery through the floor of the Parthenon and almost to the ceiling each piece was welded to that steel Armature and the statue then was complete however the sculptor then needed to fill and sand the seams make the Nike that the statue holds in her right hand make the shield that rests against her left side and make the crests for her helmet and the people of the base freeze altogether the project was completed in May of 1990 and unveiled then but had to wait another 12 years for the gilding and paint that makes the statue look as near as possible to fidus statue of [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] antiquity the Parthenon still lacks the ionic freeze but it is my hope that someday we will finally have the finished piece to make this a complete replica in the meantime the Parthenon is the city's own art museum with the the permanent collection and changing exhibitions and it is the only place in the world where people can see what the ancient Greeks intended to be seen with the huge statue of Athena filling up a beautifully decorated box as a thank offering to the [Music] goddess [Music] oh