 Thanks to all of you for coming out today and thank you for the barns to organizing a pretty amazing event with some really good food too. So like these Lee Krasner murals we looked at yesterday, the photographs I'm gonna talk about occupy a public space that is really difficult to photograph. And so I've done my best and I've selected viewing angles that I think are important to my argument because this project really started with the irritated feeling that two sculptures were installed too high. I was in Brooklyn, I had paused in the Archway of the Soldiers and Sailors Arch, a Civil War monument built in Grand Army Plaza, and I was craning my neck to examine two bronze reliefs mounted on opposing arch walls. These were designed by Thomas Akins and the sculptor William Rudolph O'Donovan. They reportedly depicted President Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant on horseback. But what I saw from below was a shadowed presentation of bellies, chins, and boot soles. Cast almost entirely in the round, the horse's bodies swelled into the archway space in expelled anatomical detail. Tubular veins sprawled over the crests and hollows of particularized muscles and stretched beneath bronze skin pulled drumtight over a skeletal frame. Above, two humans, difficult to see from the oblique viewing angle. One, Lincoln, turned to greet the archway, gesturing toward an unseen presence with an outstretched hat. The other, Grant, stared resolutely forward, clutching his reins he seemed as if he would momentarily ride out of the monument. Examined from below, the sculptures seemed to emphasize the bone and flesh of animals over human character. 19th century audiences rejected both horse and rider. City workers installed the panels of December of 1895 and backlash was immediate. Brooklyn newspapers complained about their placement, mocked the horses, and lamented the portrayals of Grant and Lincoln. The American Institute of Architects even condemned the works as, quote, pernicious in their influence and in every respect unworthy of the exalted place and purpose which they have been assigned to fill. Meanwhile, city officials unsuccessfully lobbied for their removal. So today, I'll revisit these peculiar panels and the problems in viewing they create. I want to identify a specific set of visual and historical relationships between horse, rider, and viewer that mold horses' bodies into objects of scrutiny and evaluation. And I will propose that the panels function dialectically within their monumental setting. They offer a synthesis of realism and allegory in which horses' bodies mitigate human loss and trauma. The panels were supposed to reinforce a narrative of national unity. In 1891, a committee led by the monument's chief architect commissioned William O'Donovan to design panels depicting Grant and Lincoln on horse back. And you can see that the location was already in place before they hired a sculptor. Stylistically, O'Donovan was a curious choice. He was a self-taught portrait sculptor who disdained allegorical works, declaring in 1878, quote, we no longer think in allegories as the ancients once did. But he was skilled at political maneuvering, and he leveraged his influence in New York City to secure commissions for civil war monuments, including the panels despite having fought briefly for the Confederacy. O'Donovan quickly added Acons to the commission whom he had befriended in the mid-1870s. Acons would sculpt the horses. O'Donovan would focus on the figures of Grant and Lincoln. Progress proceeded slowly, for Acons had never sculpted such large pieces, and as he missed deadlines he ignored the committee's mounting concerns and retreated to sculpt at his sister's farm in Avondale, Pennsylvania. Acons used two living horses as models. He selected his own horse, Billy, for Lincoln's Mount. He had purchased Billy in 1887 while summering on a ranch in the North Dakota Badlands. When he returned, he quipped that he was a, quote, public benefactor for selecting a horse whose gate was so gentle that neighborhood children could ride him. For Grant, he borrowed a saddle horse named Clinker from a Philadelphia breeder. He and O'Donovan worked out the poses and photographs while Acons designed small scale models in clay and presumably wax, which he then worked up in plaster. During the final stage, he molded life-size plaster sections of horses, and so you can see here he's sculpting Billy's butt, and then down here is one of the smaller scale models that he sculpted, and I'm assuming based on the hollowness here that this is a plaster that he's working on outdoors. These pieces were then sent to the National Fine Art Foundry in Manhattan for casting and assembly. Art historian Akilah Reason has suggested that Acons was more interested in the sculpting process than the commemorative aspect. He saw the project as an opportunity to recreate the methods of the classical Greek sculptor Phidias, whom he believed sculpted horses direct from life, and here he has sketched recreation of Phidias in a very similar pose to him working outdoors. In emulating Phidias, she argues, Acons ignored the expectations of his public audience and the works failed to meaningfully engage the historical memory of the Civil War. I want to offer an alternate reading, proposing that the horses' bodies and their production resonate specifically as a commemorative project. O'Donovan explained the selection of Billy and Clinker as a historical recreation. The two were selected for the Civil War roles their bodies implied. He explained that he had portrayed Lincoln as if he had just borrowed a horse from a low-ranking cavalryman to greet passing soldiers. And Billy's slim form reinforced this narrative. It indicated that he was a fit animal, but not of fine breeding. Quote, just such a horse as the president might have got from some trooper. Clinker embodied the well-bred war horse given only to prominent officers. His massive features identified his elite pedigree and his physical endurance. An essential trait for Grant was the fact that he was depicted leading a long march. Visual differences between the sculpted animals thus signaled fidelity to a historical division of animal labor. Brooklyn reporters appear to have caught on, for they evaluated the bronze horses for services if they were alive. They examined the horse's legs, torsos and mouths and made judgments about character and use. After considering Lincoln's mount in finding, quote, flattened ears and champing mouth, one reporter concluded that the animal was, quote, spunky and skittish and liable to throw the president. An additional critic claimed that Grant's horse, quote, trails his leg like a tired donkey while another suggested it was ill for it looked, quote, as if it wanted to lie down. Criticism of sculpted horses dates back as far as ancient Rome, of course, but I want to suggest that there's a specific 19th century context for this mode of animal evaluation. The North and South mobilized more than 100,000 horses during the Civil War. Horses served an essential technological role facilitating combat and infrastructure. And when treated as such, horses had certain limits. They were susceptible to disease and not all could survive the grueling living conditions or the stress of combat. And Henry Schradie's grant memorial dramatizes the failure of horses as a combat technology showing stylized beasts panicking under cannon fire. O'Donovan himself may have experienced these limits for he had served amongst horses in a Confederate artillery battery. These limits placed demands on human seeing. Quartermasters rushed to meet the overwhelming demand for horses, yet the purchase of a sick or ill-tempered animal could cause an epidemic or a catastrophic accident. So the union issued guidelines detailing how to evaluate horses based on a quick scan of their external anatomy. Such guidelines offer evidence then of the coordinated visual management of animal bodies during the Civil War, a form of seeing that was a pillar of the war effort. Furthermore, horses were prominent in Akin's own artistic practice. He regularly incorporated horse dissections into his anatomy instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy. And while preparing the reliefs, he delivered a lecture in Philadelphia on the differential structures that enabled horses to stand and move, leading O'Donovan to claim quote, there is practically no man in the country, certainly no artist, which has studied the anatomy of the horse so profoundly as Akin's. Akin's best known tie to horses is his infamously precise depiction of trotting in the Fairman Rogers' forehand. And scholars have recently singled out Fairman Rogers who owned these horses here, and Rogers' financial contributions to Penn's veterinary school, which trained veterinarians to manage the nation's significant horse population, as well as Akin's own involvement with early animal rights organizations in Philadelphia. In short, Akin's and his friends saw the examination of horses as a component of civic welfare. The gaze of a Civil War quartermaster and contemporary strains of animal science converge in the reliefs. Standing within the archway, scrutiny replaces adulation. Akin's dissecting eye peels back stylization, revealing a flayed armature of bone, muscle, and tendon that signals an animal's individual role within a historical hierarchy. The reliefs thus suggest the importance of viewing horses mechanistically as potential tools of warfare. They commemorate a militarized and animal-oriented version of what Alan Secula defines as quote, instrumental realism. A mode of seeing that categorize the external language of the body in the hopes of controlling it. And perhaps the wholeness of these carefully chosen bodies effaces those shattered by this distributive logic. But perhaps this account is incomplete. Reconstructionary equestrian sculptures often asserted an image of national unity in order. According to Kirk Savage, they did so by embedding quote, the idea of command in the apparently natural dominance of man over animal. Consider by way of a brief comparison the Shaw Memorial. Roughly contemporary with the reliefs that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, an African-American regiment led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. The horse functions as a symbol within the allegory, a boundary distinguishing the white officer from his black soldiers. The Colonel's hold on the reins warps the horse into a stylized march. The striding foreleg unfolds as if it were an extension of Shaw's sword while the corrugated folds of its neck register the imprint of human command. Acons and O'Donovan release their horses from the clutch of the symbol. As Lincoln directs his attention toward his imagined audience, he relaxes the reins. Momentarily left to its own interior devices, his horse champs at the bit, yet its legs remain firmly in place. It's stabilizing presence traceable to an interlocking anatomy that is not an overt product of human mastery. Both animals exhibited decidedly natural stances, not trained poses or strides and remember that Billy was quote, not of exceptionally fine breeding. And as Lincoln and Billy cohabitate this space, they also hint at an alternative relationship between human and non-human. Both humans appear against a blank backdrop. For one reporter, the relationship between figure and ground evoked traumatic violence. Quote, the lack of Lincoln's left arm and of Grant's right certainly calls for protest, for the men look as if those limbs have been amputated. Whereas Colonel Shaw is accompanied by an angelic presence that blesses his regiment's sacrifice, the Brooklyn reliefs cut through with an uncanny reminder of absent limbs, leaving fragmented bodies within a field of empty bronze. Cerebethum has incisively demonstrated how reconstruction era civil war monuments visually and thematically asserted the wholeness of the human body. They did so to try to displace the physical traumas that haunted veterans, working to establish a dialogue between local scars and national unity. The visual effect of the three-quarter relief interrupts this discourse. It sheers Grant and Lincoln's torsos into uncanny emblems of amputation and incompleteness. And while Shaw is surrounded by his soldiers, Lincoln gestures into empty space. As he turns in his saddle, almost looking at Grant, his eyes pass over even the tallest visitor. One reporter compared Lincoln's physical and psychic detachment to a stranger riding a trolley car. Examining Lincoln from below, a different critic found the hat unnerving, quote, full of the blackest shadow. O'Donovan identified it as a symbol of mourning, quote, dawned probably in token of the death of his boy Ted. This symbol offers a somber counterpoint to the arch's celebratory allegory. Just outside the archway, a soldier raises a saber, thrusts aside his horse, and encourages his companions to stride past the dying. Horses here. Within the triumphal passageway, Lincoln greets his audience with the sign of unresolved loss and enveloping darkness. Returning to the horses, perhaps the distributive logic of instrumental realism addresses these traumas. On several occasions, Aiken celebrated male doctors who addressed the physical damages wrought by the war through the study of human anatomy. John Brinton here had selected anatomical specimens for a survey of wartime surgery practices, and Samuel Gross had drafted a handbook for field surgery. The panels suggest a similar anatomy-oriented sensibility. Aiken and O'Donovan selected and rendered horses that pictured non-human stability and wholeness amidst human fragmentation and absence. Aiken slotted Billy, known for his calm temperament and gentle gait, into the role of a patient support. The panels thus commemorate the historical presence of horses' bodies and those capable of reading them, and they commemorate them not as a symbolic extension of human authority, but as a stabilizing precondition for acts of leadership. Perhaps they also look forward, selecting animals to serve as an almost therapeutic role, a prosthetic presence that staves off the blank force of human trauma. Thank you.