History of Dairying

Jerome Thompson

“The History of Dairying was only the first instance of projects that would shape the experience of being at Iowa State; walking, sitting, looking contemplating – all took on an esthetic dimension as the campus developed.”

-Lea Rosson Delong, A Campus Beautiful (2015), University Museums.

Entitled The History of Dairying, Petersen’s mural is made up of seven terra cotta panels. The three left-hand panels show traditional dairying methods while the three right-hand ones display the then current practices contemporary students were learning. As if responding to the Iowa City atmosphere during the PWAP, the style that Petersen developed for these panels was a simpler and more abstracted one, harmonizing with the approach Grant Wood used for his Iowa State College library mural paintings. In addition to the influence of Wood, Petersen may have also been affected by the widespread, popular, and elegant style of Art Deco which he could have seen in a particularly sophisticated version at the new Valley National Bank in Des Moines.

March 2, 1935, Grant Wood and Petersen visited Ames to draw up plans for the terra cotta and fountain. Petersen’s first concept of the Dairy cycle was more narrative and a continuous treatment of the history of dairying. The extensive detail of his sketch shows how carefully he worked out elements of the story he wished to tell. This kind of preparation was typical for Petersen: he commonly drew plans that evolved from barely decipherable visual ideas into exacting, finely finished drawings or models. Exactly why he changed his original approach into a more episodic, seven-panel design is not known now. Perhaps it had to do with the technical demands of casting the work in terra cotta.

After the PWAP concluded in late April, Iowa State committed to the completion of Petersen’s sculptural cycle, with the unqualified support of the Chairman of the Dairy Industry Department, Martin Mortensen (1872–1953) (like Petersen, a Danish born American), whose portrait Petersen later sculpted. President Hughes realized, however, that in order to be affordable, the seven large panels would have to be produced through facilities at the college. Petersen planned to carry them out in terra cotta, a reddish, rough textured clay that has been used since Antiquity. Although he had not worked extensively in terra cotta before, he drew on his firm grounding in traditional sculptural techniques and expanded it under the direction of the Head of the Ceramic Engineering Department at Iowa State, Paul E. Cox (1879–1968). Somewhat doubtful at first about dealing with an artist, Cox nevertheless joined his expertise with Petersen’s creativity and willingness to work hard in forging a team that accomplished the commission.

The special kiln that Cox had earlier invented was considered state-of-the-art, but it was not designed to fire such massive panels as a whole; each of the six panels were over five feet tall and seven feet long and the central fountain panel was even larger: about seven feet tall and eleven feet long. The panels had to be broken into nine sections (the central panel required eleven) and each fired separately. It was long, laborious and dirty work, but Cox and Petersen adapted to and overcame each technical and artistic challenge involved. Each firing lasted 60 hours, with a careful monitoring of a three temperature sequence. It was round the clock work, and Charlotte, the artist’s wife, recalled how they would often get up in the night to bring coffee and sandwiches to the student assistant on duty at the kiln. After all the obstacles, the entire sculptural cycle was installed by mid-1935 and both men were proud of their successful collaboration. Aware that the college prized practice over theory, Cox declared in a letter to President Hughes, “Petersen is not only a good sculptor but is a practical man,” and in regard to their job together, he added, “We are entirely right and entirely correct in all the steps we took.” The endurance of The History of Dairying proves that Cox was right.

In his very first commission from Iowa State, Petersen showed the sensitivity to the surroundings that would become a hallmark for the rest of his campus monuments. He was concerned not just with the sculpture itself, but with the entire environment in which it would be seen: the room it would be in, the architecture it would be attached to or, if it were an outdoor sculpture, the landscape design. Here, he saw his goal as the creation of an entire complex, containing the sculpture panels, a water fountain and pool, the courtyard and the existing architecture. For the Dairy Industry Building, he used his sculpture as the focus of an “outdoor room” that would provide a sheltered, quiet, and beautiful retreat in the center of the university. Insert photo of footprints in the pool?

The entrance hall of the Dairy Industry Building contains two additional sculptures (in plaster rather than terra cotta) on the history of dairying. The first of these large panels shows ancient methods in a calm, classicizing style. Its inscription, in block letters at the bottom, “For melke and chese and buttere for ther bred / The Abram wymmen slaved and laboured longe” describes a contrast with the second panel which shows more modern practices, “Four thousand yeers pass by before man thinkes / To chaunge these plodding houres to houres of songe.” The Old English inscriptions were provided by one of the Petersen’s friends, J.C. Cunningham (1878–1948), professor of corn genetics.

Adapted from: Lea Rosson DeLong “Christian Petersen’s Midwest”, 2004.

The Dairy Industry Building (now the Food Science Building) was across the street from my father’s office in Curtiss Hall. During the summer when campus was quiet, I made visits to the building’s courtyard. It was almost like a secret garden with its pool and sculptures. When I was pretty sure no one was around, I doffed my shoes and waded into the pool. Petersen’s dairy cows drinking at the pool reminded me of my grandfather’s cows drinking from a trough. There were also vending machines in the building that were stocked with milk from the Iowa State Dairy.

-Jerome Thompson