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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1890
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ART GALLERY. ART GALLERY. 185 The University art gallery was the gift of citizens of Champaign and Urbana. It occupies a beautiful hall, 61 by 79 feet, and the large display of art objects has surprised and delighted all visitors. In sculpture it embraces thirteen full sized casts of celebrated statues, including the Laocoon group, the Venus of Milo, etc., forty statues of reduced size, and a large number of busts, ancient and modern, bas reliefs, etc., making over four hundred pieces. It includes also hundreds of large autotypes, photographs, and fine engravings, representing many of the great masterpieces of painting of nearly all the modern schools. Also a gallery of historical portraits, mostly large French lithographs of peculiar fineness, copied from the great national portrait galleries of France. The value of this splendid collection, as a means of education, is shown in the work of the school of drawing and design of the University. MUSEUM OF INDUSTRIAL ARTS. A large room is devoted to a museum of practical art, the materials for which are constantly accumulating in the various schools of science. Prominent among the agricultural specimens here exhibited is an excellent collection of the sub-species and varieties of Indian corn, including the best of their kinds, a considerable collection of small grains and of grasses, a collection of fibers in various states of manufacture, and a series of analyses of grains showing at a glance the elements and proportion of structure. The museum contains full lines of illustrations of the work of the shops; models made at the University or purchased abroad; drawings in all departments; Patent Office models, etc.; samples of building materials, natural and artificial; a large collection illustrating the forestry of Illinois, Florida and California; with whatever may be secured that will teach or illustrate in this most important phase of University work. The elegant exhibit made by the University at the Centennial and Cotton Exposition at New Orleans finds a permanent abode in this apartment. A notable feature of this collection is the gift of Henry Lord Gay, architect, of Chicago. It consists of a model in plaster and a complete set of drawings, of a competitive design for a monument to be erected in Eome, commemorative of Victor Emanuel, first king of Italy. The monument was to be of white marble, an elaborate gothic structure, beautifully ornamented, and 300 feet high. Its estimated cost was to have v been seven and a quarter millions of francs. The design was placed by the art committee second on a list of 289 competitors; but both the first and second were set aside for political reasons. Mr. Gay's generous gift occupies the place of honor in the museum of industrial arts.
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