ST. LOUIS COUNTY • In an old munitions warehouse along a wooded road, the St. Louis County parks department has stacked remnants of one of the most significant sculpture collections in the region.
Some of the pieces, rusting and dusty, lie on their sides. Others are piled on top of each other. One, broken into three, is crated and stamped, “Work of art; fragile.”
Almost 40 years ago, Ernest Trova, one of the area’s most important sculptors, donated 40 works to help start Laumeier Sculpture Park, one of the first modern sculpture gardens in the country.
Last year, St. Louis County tried to sell most of them.
Several pieces had fallen into disrepair. The county parks system was strapped for cash. And Laumeier’s new executive director, Marilu Knode, no longer wanted all of the sculptures.
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The mission of the park, encircled by Sunset Hills homes, was broader than a single artist, Knode argued. She wanted room to grow.
“Laumeier was founded with that original Trova donation,” Knode said. “However, it has always been about the best contemporary global art practice. It was never meant to be the Ernest Trova Sculpture Garden.”
Last summer, the county put out a prospectus listing 27 Trovas for sale. Some were shiny steel, others painted black. They ranged in size and in worth, from $3,000 to about $50,000, according to insurance records.
Park leaders sent a notice to private collectors, institutions, galleries and museums. The sale lasted about a month. The county fielded a few serious inquiries.
Then some of Trova’s supporters found out.
“They didn’t dare do it when he was alive,” said Matt Strauss, a family friend and founder of the St. Louis nonprofit art gallery White Flag Projects. “The guy founded the place. It just seemed like bad practice, seemed disrespectful.”
Strauss was also one of the few who knew of the original contract between the county and Trova, who died in 2009. Strauss called Knode. The contract, Strauss told her, only allowed for Trova’s works to be lent out, not sold.
He sent her the paperwork. The county canceled the sale. About a month later, leaders announced they would take loan requests. Several community groups have responded.
Trova’s relatives are content his work will be on display.
“Our family is happy with everything,” said Trova’s son, Tino, who lives in Clayton. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
Still, some see Laumeier’s handling of the Trovas as an affront to the legacy of a sculptor whose reputation crested 40 years ago. The process — stripping the Trovas out of Laumeier, stacking them in a World War II warehouse, and then sending them out to their new homes — has left an odd path of empty pedestals where statues once stood, and broken art waiting to be repaired.
And yet, it could lead to a public resurgence of his work.
‘ROTTING IN A FIELD’
By the early 1970s, Ernest Trova was famous. He lived and worked in Richmond Heights but displayed his art in New York galleries and museums. Actors and millionaires owned his work. His sculptures, which largely focused on the often silvery, always androgynous humanoid known as the Falling Man, had garnered international attention.
Meanwhile, Trova, an eccentric, mustachioed man with a bald pate, was looking for something yet undiscovered in St. Louis. He hunted for land on which to build a park devoted to the intersection of sculpture and nature.
The county parks director at the time made a suggestion. Dozens of acres at South Geyer and Rott roads in Sunset Hills had been donated to the county a few years prior by Matilda Laumeier after the death of her husband, real estate investor Henry Laumeier.
Trova’s donation jump-started the park. Laumeier directors gathered some of the biggest names in modern sculpture, from the concrete cubes of Donald Judd to the giant red cylinders of Alexander Liberman to Niki de Saint Phalle’s colorful, playful mosaics.
At the same time, 40 sculptures meant a lot of upkeep. It’s unclear exactly what happened — Laumeier leaders admit that the park’s record-keeping was sub-par, at best — but many of the Trovas were left to rust.
“They were supposed to take care of these sculptures,” Strauss said. “But half have been rotting in a field.”
Moreover, Trova’s work eventually fell out of favor. Some critics panned the works he sent to Laumeier as hum-drum. And his Falling Man was getting, some said, commercialized.
“Like so many contemporary artists,” said Malcolm Ivey, president and owner of Ivey-Selkirk Auctioneers, which sold a large chunk of Trova’s estate, “other artists came on the scene, and he fell by the wayside.”
In 2009, Knode arrived to head the nonprofit arts foundation that runs the park for the county. One of her first jobs was to take inventory of sculptures and their conditions. At that point, about half the Trovas were still on display; others had been lent out and a few were in storage.
Knode, in a recent interview, hesitated to admit the extent of damage to the Trovas when she arrived, even arguing that all were still publicly presentable. Her staff later acknowledged that many needed restoration and several had major, even structural problems: rusted welds, missing parts, wobbly bases and broken limbs.
More troubling to Knode was what locals were saying about Laumeier: It had gotten stale.
“How does Laumeier recapture a sense of excitement?” Knode asked last week. “A lot of the energy about the arts has gone from Laumeier to Grand Center.”
In 2010, Knode started talking to the county parks director about returning most of the Trovas, which were technically owned by the county and on loan to the foundation. Laumeier would keep five key pieces.
They discussed spreading the extra sculptures throughout other county parks. But the works needed restoration and would require expensive yearly maintenance.
“In the big scheme of everything I’m taking care of, I’ve had, let’s just say, higher priorities with a shrinking budget,” said interim parks director Tom Ott. “We have roofs, restrooms, playgrounds that all need attention.”
They decided instead to try to sell them, before settling on lending them out.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Laumeier leaders have argued that rust and vandalism simply happen to outdoor sculptures, and the deterioration of the Trovas, while regrettable, was unavoidable.
But art conservators say sculpture parks are trained to protect their art. They keep precise guidelines and records on the maintenance and conditions of every piece. Such records are essential to the worth of the work.
“The issue you’re really talking about is a lack of resources,” said Martin Burke, a Washington conservator and past president of the American Institute for Conservation. “Everybody agrees it’s important. Everybody wants (the art) to survive.”
Laumeier has one full-time art caretaker. He reviews 60-plus outside sculptures weekly, keeps them painted and shined, and is constantly pulling art down for restoration, often for thousands of dollars. Right now, the museum is entrenched in a six-figure cleaning of the Judd concrete cubes.
But institutions often have much bigger collections than they have the ability to maintain, Burke said. And restoration, he said, can regularly cost from $100 to more than $50,000.
It’s not unusual, then, for museums to lend out works that are in bad shape — requiring the borrower to pay expenses, from transportation to restoration.
Usually, however, the lending institution gives explicit instructions on how to fix the work. And that may be the key, now, to the future of the county’s sculptures.
Laumeier already had lent out a few Trovas over the years.
Until recently, the WingHaven residents association, in St. Charles County, had three mounted in subdivision parks. Last summer, Laumeier asked for them back, as part of the planned sale. The county has picked up two and plans to get the third later. Rust had pitted the base of one. Welds had broken on another.
Another three Trovas still sit in front of the GenAmerica building downtown. Laumeier has tried to get them back, said Emily Rodenbeck, the park’s new marketing manager. But the building has changed hands, she said. The new owners think they own the Trovas, and the park doesn’t have the loan agreements to prove otherwise.
The new wave of loans will be different, Rodenbeck said. “We’re not going to let these sculptures rot in public fields,” she said.
Webster University has rebuilt one already, rewelding its seams and painting it with thick black paint at a total cost of more than $4,000. Three others await work. University officials insist they will use the “best professional restoration.”
The city of Webster Groves has two Trovas stored at the back of a service yard, behind dirt piles and asphalt chip.
That may sound like undignified storage, said City Manager Steve Wylie, but it’s no less dignified than the corner of the county’s warehouse.
Besides, said Mayor Gerry Welch, the city has big plans for the pieces. A professional restoration. A sculpture park on West Kirkham Avenue. A chance for new generations to appreciate Trova and his work.
“We are so excited to have them,” Welch said.
Trova, she said, has left a legacy of public art in St. Louis.