Muse of music2/18/2023 ![]() Once a year, he would drive down with his family to visit his favorite of his father’s works, bringing gardening shears to cut back the shrubs growing over his father’s name, which was etched into the Fountain’s base. In the 1990s, George Stanley’s son, Maitland, lived in San Francisco. Weeds began to overgrow the fountain, and the Bowl’s managers, lacking the funds to do a proper restoration, planted hedges to cover up the statue which had become more of an eye-sore than an icon. Mineral deposits built up in the fountain pools. By the late 1970s, pollutants and bird droppings eroded and discolored the surface of the sculptures. The statue was an immediate success as the gateway to the Bowl, quickly becoming an icon celebrated on posters and postcards. Hopefully some of them were able to see the highlight of the year-Igor Stravinsky conducting his own Firebird Suite, with choreography by the renowned Adolph Bolm. Look outward and not inward upward and not downward forward and not backward and lend a hand.’įord went on to add: “To me, that is the important thing for the future of Bowl history-to lend a hand.”įord saw to it that all the construction workers and artisans who lent a hand on the project were given free tickets to attend the Bowl that summer. He quoted, as he often did, his favorite author, Edward Everett Hale: Though the community and country had been battered by a decade of Depression and were about to enter yet another world war, on that July afternoon, Ford cited the Muse as an example of the good that can be achieved when people work together for a common cause. ![]() The Muse was unveiled on July 8th, 1940, before the start of the Bowl’s 19th season. Simpler, more grounded, more horizontal, and more utilitarian, Moderne reflects the decade of the 1930s, as Americans found ingenious ways to economize without compromise. Unlike the Observatory, a paragon of Art Deco design, the Muse statue belongs to a lesser known off-shoot of Deco, Streamline Moderne. He was also one of the designers of the Five Astronomers statue that towers above the nearby Griffith Observatory. Stanley was most famous for designing the 13 and ½ inch Academy Awards “Oscar” statuette. He asked Stanley to build a work of public art, which he called a “fountain complex,” to mark the Bowl’s entrance. The Bowl’s leaders-its President Charles Toberman and the powerful County Supervisor John Anson Ford-lobbied for hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore the Bowl from the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.)., FDR’s New Deal-era program to put Americans to work. Though you might not even notice The Muse on your first or second visit to the Bowl, once you stop and really take in sculptor George Stanley’s 1940 Streamline Moderne masterpiece, you can’t help but be drawn to this deceptively simple monument to the power of art.Īs the Great Depression raged on in the late 1930s, the Hollywood Bowl continued to mount performances, but the facility itself had fallen into a state of disrepair. (At one point in its history, it almost did.) Statues of her two sisters, the Muse of Drama and the Muse of Dance, are perched below her, on either side of the fountain.īuilt into the curve and slope of the surrounding hillside, the 1,000-ton structure practically disappears into the landscape. Kneeling and strumming a lyre, the Muse of Music hovers above the entrance to the Hollywood Bowl on Highland Avenue. ![]() As you first enter the Hollywood Bowl, off Highland Avenue, you may miss it, but look closely to your right and you will be greeted by a "statue." We call it a “statue,” but it’s actually three statues-all mounted on a 220-foot-long pedestal, which is itself a four-tiered fountain, illuminated by dozens of lights hidden inside. ![]()
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