Christian Petersen (1885-1961) was a Danish-born American sculptor and university teacher. He was the first permanent artist in residence at a U.S. college or university,[1] and he is noted for the large body of sculpture associated with a single place, Iowa State College, now Iowa State University.
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Born in Denmark, he emigrated the United States in 1894 with his parents. In 1900 he became an apprentice die cutter and later attended the Fawcett School of Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. He joined the Art Students League of New York, and studied with leading artists there, including Henry Hudson Kitson and George Bridgman. He worked as a die cutter at the Robins Company in Attleboro, Massachusetts and continued to sculpt, gaining commissions for works in the East and Midwest through Kitson's connections.[2]
At the start of the Great Depression he moved to the Midwest, and eventually took a job working for Grant Wood in the Public Works of Art Project headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa. Through a WPA commission to create relief sculptures for the Dairy Industry Building at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, he became acquainted with the college president, who appointed him Sculptor in Residence in 1935. This was the first known instance of an artist in residence at a US university. Petersen was appointed Associate Professor and retired in 1955.[2]
He was married to Emma L. Hoenicke from 1908 to 1928, with whom he had three children, Helene, Lawrence, and Ruth. He married Charlotte Garvey in 1931, and had a daughter Mary Charlotte in 1936.[2]
A pair of felines commissioned for an entrance gate to the Charles J. Davol Estate in North Kingstown, Rhode Island.
Additional information on works of art by Christian Petersen
Petersen's sculpture is predominantly Neoclassical and beaux arts in style, and he virulently denounced modernism. He especially admired Augustus Saint-Gaudens' reliefs and war memorials. But he also included some gestures toward modernism in his relief sculptures, perhaps under the influence of Grant Wood.[1]
His large scale sculpture has been the object of numerous restoration projects at Iowa State University, to preserve his public art legacy.[3] Other of his works are collected in the Christian Petersen Museum, in the restored Morrill Building on the campus.
Though his major works consist primarily of public art at Iowa State University and the surrounding community, his early work has received recent attention, including a retrospective exhibition in 2006 of his work from the 1910s and 1920s done at the Art Students League, in Rhode Island, Boston, and Attleboro, MA. Many of these early works of art are unlocated and Iowa State University Museums is actively searching for the sculptures or information leading to their location. [1]