Petersen’s Library Boy and Girl show that he could apply the same inclusive approach to sculpture for an interior as for the out of doors. The two students sit modestly on either side of the entrance to a stairway, so that viewers must pass between them whether going into or out of the room. Although at first they seem unassuming and absorbed in their reading, with a little scrutiny it soon becomes clear that they are actually absorbed in something else: each other. While their books are open on their laps and their heads are down, they are also angled slightly so that we sense their sharp awareness of one another. The sweetness and the tempered longing of the couple may have seemed especially poignant in 1944, when so many were separated from loved ones and the simple pleasures of a college romance seemed very remote in the midst of war.
The two sculptures are placed in a room that also contains Grant Wood’s Breaking the Prairie, an image that symbolizes the beginning of Midwestern culture, a culture that both influenced and was influenced by the land grant colleges such as Iowa State. Passing between the boy and girl going up the stairway, the viewer encounters Wood’s murals celebrating the education provided to both men and women at Iowa State. The two sculptures, then, have the effect of humanizing the grand historical and educational schemes that surround them.
The Iowa State Library was one of my favorite places to visit with my dad. The best part of a trip to the library was when I could check out books on his account. He was checking out books on agronomy, crops, and weather while I could find Native American, natural history and military history books galore. The sculptures of the Library Boy and Girl seemed like sentinels who guarded the entrance to the great reading room above. The Grant Wood murals in the reading room were magnificent to look at again and again to find new details not noticed before. The Reading Room was one of my favorite study spots in college.
-Jerome Thompson
Library Boy and Girl: Models, 1944
Christian Petersen, (Danish-American, 1885-1961)
Painted plaster
Gift of Wayne Moore and Family. In the Christian Petersen Art Collection, Art on Campus Preparatory Studies and Maquette Collection, Christian Petersen Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. UM2007.18ab
Study for Library Boy and Girl and After the Blitz: Preliminary Studies, 1940-1943
Christian Petersen, (Danish-American, 1885-1961)
Black graphite or conte on paper
Purchased by University Museums from Mary Petersen with the Christian Petersen Memorial Fund. In the Christian Petersen Art Collection, Christian Petersen Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. UM92.252
Studies related to Library Boy and Girl, 1943
Christian Petersen, (Danish-American, 1885-1961)
Black graphite or conte on paper
Purchased by University Museums from Mary Petersen with the Christian Petersen Memorial Fund. In the Christian Petersen Art Collection, Christian Petersen Art Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. UM92.253
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
