John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was an American sculptor best known for his work on Mount Rushmore.
30 Facts About Gutzon Borglum
2.
Gutzon Borglum is associated with various other public works of art across the US, including Stone Mountain in Georgia, the statue of Union General Philip Sheridan in Washington, DC, as well as a bust of Abraham Lincoln which was exhibited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt and which is held in the United States Capitol crypt in Washington, DC.
3.
The son of Danish immigrants, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was born in 1867 in St Charles in what was then Idaho Territory.
4.
Jens Borglum decided to leave the LDS church and moved to Omaha, Nebraska where polygamy was both illegal and taboo.
5.
Jens Gutzon Borglum had worked mainly as a woodcarver before his decision to attend the Saint Louis Homeopathic Medical College in St Louis, Missouri.
6.
Gutzon Borglum remained in Fremont until 1882, when his father enrolled him in St Mary's College, Kansas.
7.
Gutzon Borglum married Mary Montgomery Williams, on May 20,1909, with whom he had three children, including a son, Lincoln, and a daughter, Mary Ellis Gutzon Borglum Vhay.
8.
Gutzon Borglum was active in the committee that organized the New York Armory Show of 1913, the birthplace of modernism in American art.
9.
Gutzon Borglum moved into an estate in Stamford, Connecticut in 1914 and lived there for 10 years.
10.
Gutzon Borglum sheltered Czechoslovak Legion members on his land at Stamford in 1917.
11.
Gutzon Borglum received his Scottish Rite Degrees in the New York City Consistory on October 25,1907.
12.
Gutzon Borglum was friends with Theodore Roosevelt for many years and during the 1912 United States presidential election Borglum was a very active campaign organizer and member of the Bull Moose Party.
13.
Gutzon Borglum was highly suited to the competitive environment surrounding the contracts for public buildings and monuments, and his public sculptures are found all around the United States.
14.
In 1908, Gutzon Borglum won a competition for an equestrian statue of the Civil War General Philip Sheridan to be placed in Sheridan Circle in Washington, DC A second version of General Philip Sheridan was erected in Chicago, Illinois, in 1923.
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Ward, a much older and more established artist and one whom Gutzon Borglum had clashed with earlier in regard to the National Sculpture Society.
16.
Gutzon Borglum completed the model in 1925, but due to lack of funds it was not cast until 1940, and then was only a fourth its originally planned size.
17.
Gutzon Borglum lived at the historic Menger Hotel, which in the 1920s was the residence of a number of artists.
18.
Gutzon Borglum subsequently planned the redevelopment of the Corpus Christi waterfront; the plan failed, although a model for a statue of Christ intended for it was later modified by his son and erected on a mountaintop in South Dakota.
19.
Gutzon Borglum promoted change and modernity, although he was berated by academicians.
20.
Gutzon Borglum was initially involved in the carving of Stone Mountain in Georgia.
21.
Lee's head was unveiled on Lee's birthday January 19,1924, to a large crowd, but soon thereafter Gutzon Borglum was increasingly at odds with the officials of the organization.
22.
Gutzon Borglum left Georgia permanently, his tenure with the organization over.
23.
When Houser left Gutzon Borglum to devote his talents to his own work, Gutzon Borglum's son, Lincoln, took over as Assistant-Sculptor to his father.
24.
Gutzon Borglum alternated exhausting on-site supervising with world tours, raising money, polishing his personal legend, sculpting a Thomas Paine memorial for Paris and a Woodrow Wilson memorial for Poznan, Poland.
25.
Four public works by Gutzon Borglum are in Newark, New Jersey: Seated Lincoln, Indian and the Puritan, Wars of America, and a stele with bas-relief, First Landing Party of the Founders of Newark.
26.
Gutzon Borglum sculpted the Memorial to the "Start Westward of the United States", which is located in Muskingum Park, Marietta, Ohio.
27.
Gutzon Borglum built the statue of Daniel Butterfield at Sakura Park in Manhattan.
28.
Gutzon Borglum created a memorial to Sacco and Vanzetti, a plaster cast of which is in the Boston Public Library.
29.
Gutzon Borglum had made arrangements for an airplane to fly over the monument during the dedication ceremony on July 3,1929.
30.
Gutzon Borglum died in 1941 of a heart attack and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.