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Under Appreciated Art at SIO
Every day my companion an d I walk by the Sea Grant building and admire the stature of the tired ploughman and sometimes we even go over and pat the dog with the bone. It is in such an awkward locality that in my career I cannot remember anybody else admiring it, much less patting the dog; this note is intended to encourage the SIO community to walk up and take a look at the stature.
It is a bronze statue of a farmer sitting on his plow with a dog at his feet. This is "The Ploughman" given to SIO by the EW Scripps Trust in 1976, and originally located at Scripps' home in Miramar Ranch. Scripps family members say that the person in the statue is George Henry Scripps, the older brother of Ellen Browning Scripps and E.W. Scripps, both of whom were benefactors of SIO.
Betty Shor wrote a fine article on The Ploughman, published on Scripps Archives website:
http://scilib.ucsd.edu/sio/hist/Shor-Plowing-Through-History.pdf
The artist was Arthur Putnam and his sad story can be found at:
http://americansculptors.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/arthur-putnam/
I think it is a wonderful statue with an interesting history that is very relevant to SIO and I think it would be very nice to have it in a more central location.
Please go check it out, and pat the dog for me.
Paul Dayton
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