Charles Umlauf’s “Madonna and Child”
Forgotten Sculpture by Famous Local Artist in the Chapel Courtyard
The “Madonna and Child” statue, alternately called “Virgin and Child” by the September 25, 1953 edition of the Megaphone, was created by Austin-based artist Charles Umlauf and installed in front of the newly constructed chapel on September 1, 1953. The piece was commissioned by Mrs. Margarett Root Brown, alumna and prominent benefactor of the university, in memory of her mother, South Carolina Easley Root (Jones 383) A plaque commemorating this is placed on the plinth of the statue.
The statue is carved from cast stone, an aggregate material which in this instance is rosy-colored and sparkles in the sunlight. Compositionally balanced, with the knelt figure of the Madonna supporting the upright figure of the child Christ, “Madonna and Child” is a quiet and reverent piece constructed in a restrained modern style. This piece is part of Umlauf’s multimedia collection with the same subject matter and name, and which calls upon a longstanding artistic tradition of rendering this important Biblical story.
Umlauf himself is a Michigan native who spent a large portion of his life in Austin as an art professor at University of Texas. He had many art exhibitions at Southwestern University from the mid 1950s to early 1970s, and was remembered in the student newspaper as a prolific and well-respected artist. Many of Umlauf’s sculptures are located in a sculpture garden in Austin.
Originally, the “Madonna and Child” was placed in front of the Chapel, and would have served in tandem with the building as a reminder of the centrality of religion to student life. It was moved in 1981 during the renovation of the chapel, with the new courtyard being constructed around the sculpture. In its current location, it still depicts the Madonna as looking up to the cross at the top of the Chapel, though just from a different angle.
Ultimately, moving the sculpture placed it outside of normal student traffic patterns. One result is that most current students do not even know it exists, so it has largely dropped out of the collective memory of students as a place. The other result is more symbolic: where once the main reverential object that students encountered in front of the Chapel was a representation of the origin story for Christianity, today, that role is played by the University Seal, which represents the origin story of the University itself–and has its own reverential practices associated with it.
