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Thursday, January 4, 2007

Untapped Source of Arts Funding: Schoolchildren

posted by on January 4 at 14:16 PM

I was thumbing through the 1992 UW Press book Art in Seattle’s Public Places last night when I noticed this remarkable entry about the giant George Washington Memorial Statue at UW:

Lorado Taft was commissioned to create this memorial to the state’s namesake in 1905 through the efforts of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). The fourteen-foot-high statue was completed four years later. The price for Taft’s artwork was eight thousand dollars, and when funds ran short, the DAR asked the state’s schoolchildren to donate no more than five cents each. The children, and the state government, donated enough coins to make up the deficit.

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1

Actually, didn't a lot of kids' spare change go toward funding the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty?

Posted by COMTE | January 4, 2007 3:03 PM
2

That $0.05 in 1905 is worth $1.03 today. Just try to imagine an arts group - much less the DAR - asking all school children to donate $1 for a statue.

And that $8,000 statue? That would run $164,188.56 today.

And that's just consumer price index inflation, not counting the run on art prices.

Posted by jak | January 4, 2007 4:51 PM

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