We’ve been making moves at The Stark Center.

On Tuesday, a goddess arrived in the Stark Center’s Reading Room, bringing a new look and a fresh sense of triumph to the students and scholars who work in it. From the Blanton Museum of Art’s Collection of Battle Casts, Winged Victory of Samothrace brings the feminine form to an area that had been previously dominated by male figures. The height of the body on display, which is headless, reaches beyond 8 feet, making it very noticeably the tallest object—mortal or immortal—in the room.

The cast depicts Nike, goddess of victory, the winged messenger who delivers triumph in competition. The original sculpture was completed in marble during the Hellenistic period, likely in the range of 200-175 BCE, and erected on Samothrace, a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea, to commemorate a naval battle won by the Rhodians. It was rediscovered in 1863 and now stands in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The work is extraordinary for its wet drapery technique—which translated to the mold making process and our cast—where Nike’s clothing clings to her body and presents an enchanting sense of fluidity and realness, as if billowing in the wind, showcasing her dramatic arrival, like she just flew down from Mount Olympus and stepped through an open window to the center of the Reading Room, laurels in hand.

Except that her arms, like her head, were also lost to time. The wings, of course, remain on the original sculpture, enchanting viewers; however, after uncrating and assembling this cast from the Battle Collection, we learned that our Winged Victory would be wingless. In 1977, Battle Cast Nike’s wings were damaged to the extent that the cost of repair exceeded the cost of replacing them. Unfortunately, it seems that the broken wings were discarded and their replacement never materialized. Even so, we’re delighted to see Nike, Winged Victory, assembled and publicly displayed on campus again for the first time in many decades.

Our shifts and changes were prompted by the plans for an upcoming exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA). Titled Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments, this new exhibit is inspired by Sylvester Stallone’s fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, who created one of the most iconic moments in cinema when he ran up the 72 stone steps that lead to the East entrance of the PMoA building and turned around to look out over the city while triumphantly holding his fists high above his head. The Seated Boxer, a Battle Cast previously on display in our Fine Arts Gallery, is now out on loan to PMoA to be featured in the Rocky-inspired exhibit.

At the start of the fall semester, Jan and I met with Carter Foster, the Blanton’s Chief Curator and Deputy Director of Collections, to discuss the opportunity of loaning The Seated Boxer andhow we might adjust for its absence. We decided to shift the Dionysus Battle Cast from our Reading Room to fill the absence in the Fine Arts Gallery and Carter agreed the Blanton would loan us Winged Victory as a temporary display piece for our Reading Room. This is all very easy to type out, agree to, and keep track of the moves, but not quite as simple to make happen in the real world.

The process of moving art is more of a science. Enter Blanton Registrar, Allie Heath.  Allie coordinated all the proper paperwork to document, update, and verify the loans as well as the movement of pieces. She completed on-site condition reports before work began and also facilitated the hiring of Patrick Sheehy, who owns and operates Sheehy Fine Art Services, renowned for his care and expertise in moving works of fine art. Patrick is no stranger to the Stark Center or the Battle Casts. When we prepared to repair our lobby and gallery flooring after the 2021 winter storm, he was responsible for shifting all the Blanton’s works into our reading room, safely removed from construction. His crew also expertly crafted a crate to conceal the 2,000-pound Farnese Hercules in place, protecting our colossal guardian from all the dust and debris that came with the process of replacing our floor.

On Monday, Patrick and his team successfully delivered the crated Winged Victory to the Stark Center. They brought with them an assortment of tools and instruments, as well as prefabricated materials in order to crate The Seated Boxer in our space, with as little movement as possible. From there, they Dionysus from our Reading Room to our Fine Arts Gallery and, on Tuesday, returned to uncrate and assemble the goddess Nike. Allie was on hand both days for guidance and oversight. The project was a smooth success. It’s always a great privilege to work with the Blanton Museum of Art and the members of its team—Carter and Allie, both, are lovely people that I’m so grateful to now call friends. And, whenever I get to welcome Patrick and his crew to the Stark Center, I know there’s exciting change on the way, carried out with top-tier professionalism.

Many thanks to everyone – Molte grazie a tutti quanti!

For more information on Rising Up at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, please visit: https://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/rising-up-rocky

I always recommend you keep up with what’s happening at the Blanton: https://blantonmuseum.org/

You can learn more about the Battle Casts at the new, digital resource created by the Department of Classics: https://battlecasts.la.utexas.edu/index.html

And, read about the services offered and great work done by Sheehy Fine Art Services: https://sheehyfineartservices.com/

Recording the process with photographs and videos, I captured moments of the highly technical, detail-oriented work that went into moving these pieces over the course of two days. I’d like to share them with you, below. It was a privilege to be a part of the action and to document it as everything played out.