A New Song | FACELIFT FOR A SCULPTURE

iT MAY HAVE BEEN CORNELL'S MOST EXPENSIVE ASHTRAY. The raised flowerbed that surrounded the chunky sculpture between Uris and Olin libraries had long been a repository for extinguished butts, and the sculpture's pedestal a forum for graffiti and flyers. A cascade of droppings showed that birds found an alternative use for the bronze itself.

But Song of the Vowels, a rare example of Cubist sculpture, is actually one of the University's most valuable pieces of art. Now Song and its environs are undergoing a facelift, scheduled for completion by Commencement. Some say it's about time. "The main thing is the ashtray will disappear," says Johnson Museum director Frank Robinson. "That's absolutely not part of the artist's original conception."

The artist was Jacques Lipchitz, a Lithuanian who emigrated to Paris in the early 1900s and fell in with Picasso and other Cubist artists.He had been exploring a harp theme for several years when he made Song in 1931, and harps and human forms can been seen in its abstract shape. Lipchitz later said the title referred to an Egyptian legend that priests and priestesses conjured up the forces of nature by chanting a prayer of the same name.

The piece came to the Library in 1962, a gift from benefactors Harold Uris '25 and Percy Uris. (It is one of seven castings; some of the others are at Princeton, Stanford, and UCLA.) When Olin Library was built in 1959, the vice president for academic affairs consulted now-retired art professor Jack Squier, MFA '52, about acquiring an outdoor sculpture for the area between it and Uris. Squier recommended something by Lipchitz. He then organized a Lipchitz retrospective at Cornell, where the artist himself convinced the Uris brothers to buy not only Song but also The Bather.

Lipchitz chose the exact spot for the sculpture--and its original eighty-inch, free-standing pedestal. As a crane suspended Song, he and Squier walked nearby paths and peered from upper floors of buildings, checking how it looked. "He'd get on the walkie-talkie and say, ‘Raise it a foot,' " Squier remembers."We finally got it just right." But about four years later, Squier returned from a summer trip to find that a flowerbed had been installed around the sculpture, which distorted the proportions. "I was shocked--and angry too," he says. "I called some people about it, but I got nowhere."

In 2006, the sculpture was removed for refinishing, and the site has since been refurbished as well, with a new pedestal, granite paving, benches--and no flowerbed. Although Song will again be subject to the occasional cigarette butt, not much can hurt it. "It's built like a Sherman tank," Squier says. "It was made to be in a public place. Not many people put these in their living rooms."