Missouri Life September 2023

ARTIST

was the first to take advantage of the opportunity, asking to exchange the sculpture of relatively obscure 19th- century Kansas governor George Washington Glick with one of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 2002, Missouri’s General Assembly passed a res olution signed by Governor Bob Holden to request that Truman replace Blair in the capitol. In July 2009, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon formally requested the change and received permission from the Architect of the Capitol. Over the course of the next few years, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat whose dis trict included Truman’s home in Independence, worked to raise interest in collecting funds for the presidential sculpture, and the Truman Library Institute spearheaded the campaign. Controversy erupted in 2018, when The Kansas City Star reported on April 9 that a delegation of Missouri’s Congressional Republicans wanted the sculpture of Francis P. Blair, who began his career as one of Missouri’s first elected Republicans, to stay in the capitol so that the state’s representative statuary remained biparti san. (Benton, like Truman, was a Democrat.) In 2018, Missouri’s General Assembly passed a resolution sup ported by Governor Eric Greitens to replace Benton rather than Blair, with Truman. After Greitens resigned

From left, artist Tom Corbin’s bronze sculpture of President Harry S. Truman now represents Missouri in the US Capitol. It took careful planning and handling to move the 5,500-pound marble statue of Senator Thomas Hart Benton and set it in place at the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia.

at the beginning of June, the measure was vetoed by Governor Mike Parson that same month. Parson’s reason for vetoing the resolution was that it mistakenly iden tified the Statuary Hall sculpture of Benton as a rep resentation of the artist Thomas Hart Benton, rather than the senator. (The artist was the senator’s great- grandnephew.) The measure was reintroduced and signed by Parson in 2019, with the correct Benton iden tified. During that year, the State Historical Society of Missouri, a state agency, was identified as the future home for the Senator Benton sculpture. On September 29, 2022, Kansas City sculptor Tom Corbin’s bronze sculpture of Harry S. Truman was installed in the United States Capitol. The Benton sculp ture was removed and brought to Kansas City, where it was stored during the holidays. In late February 2023, the 5,500-pound marble artwork arrived in Columbia and now dominates the east end of the State Historical Society of Missouri’s art gallery. Senator Benton shares the space with paintings by his great-grandnephew and namesake. While Old Bullion might have been disappointed to learn that his likeness had left the nation’s capital, it has found an appropriate new home, surrounded by Missouri’s historic cultural treasures. Welcome home, Senator!

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