Visiting the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site provides a rare opportunity for individuals to participate in a wide variety of activities ranging from the artistic and historic to the outdoorsy, all in a beautiful setting. The site serves simultaneously as a museum of one of the most prominent 19th-century sculptors, as a National Park and as the site of weekly outdoor concerts. Renowned for his huge castings in bronze, including his many renderings of Abraham Lincoln, American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907) turned his private home and studio into an artistic haven for a wide variety of writers, artists and eccentrics.
While there are many oppertunities to view local paintings in New Hampshire and Vermont, the colony in Cornish provides a rare blending of interdisciplinary arts as well as an even rarer opportunity for the often overlooked art of sculpture.
Over 100 of Saint-Gaudens' works are exhibited throughout the grounds for visitors to explore at their own discretion. Particularly captivating is the final and most complete sculpture in a series of four castings of the Shaw Memorial.
The sculpture presents a massive bronze high relief of General Robert Gould Shaw leading the African American 54th Massachusetts Infantry. The attention to detail, especially in dealing with the clothes and facial features of the soldiers as well as the historically significant social context, make the memorial a cornerstone of American sculpture.
The site also provides an exhibition gallery for contemporary art, currently showing the works of a 2008 fellow at the memorial, Claire Watkins. The show, titled The Space Betwixt, is at once serene and stupefying. A delicate structure of arterial-looking networks of threads and tiny lights circumnavigates the white walls, counterbalanced by a strangely forceful center display of dozens of needles attached to the same threads suspended in air around a central magnet.
Even for someone less interested in visual art, the endless series of open lawns rolling into the New Hampshire wilderness are an excellent place to picnic, study or take leisurely walks through the trails. Weekly concerts on the lawns include an August 2 performance of works by Bach and Latin American works inspired by Bach.
Dartmouth students have the distinct privilege of experiencing summer from the same perspective as Woodrow Wilson, with the added advantages the Museum and the National Park.
While it is easy to forget that the world exists beyond walks down to the River or lazy afternoons on the Green during sophomore summer, members of the Dartmouth community should take advantage of such a historical site while they have the chance, as Saint-Gaudens is open only during the summer and early fall months.
