2025 Poster Session

The Iron Horse, a 12-foot tall fabricated steel abstract sculpture created by Abbot Pattison in 1954 during a residency at the University of Georgia, has looked out over the agricultural fields 30 minutes south of Athens, Georgia for 65 years. It is a beloved landmark for rural, artistic and collegiate communities alike. The serenity and perfect incongruity of this very modern sculpture in the midst of active farmland belie its controversial and tumultuous beginning and the persistent vandalism and deterioration, and disputes over responsibility for its care, in the decades since.

The enduring story of the Iron Horse is this: It was sited in a UGA dormitory quad on the afternoon of May 25, 1954, and within hours was the subject of escalating vandalism turned riot. The crowd of hundreds put hay in its mouth, dung under its tail, and graffitied it, mocking its abstract form. Tires and dorm mattresses were set fire beneath it repeatedly, requiring two visits by the fire department, the last of which involved turning the firehoses onto the chanting throng. Amid rumors that the vandals meant to return the next day with dynamite and acetylene torches, the administration had it removed from campus and hidden after less than 24 hours on view. Four years later, with the permission of the director of the school of art, the sculpture was moved to a horticulture professor’s farm twenty miles south of campus, where it has stood ever since. Over the decades, efforts by its supporters in the university community to return it to campus have been countered with appeals by the professor’s family and rural communities who came to claim it as their own. Its story is most often told as an allegory of the violent response of the ignorant when faced with novelty, difference and progress, and how such resistance softens and shifts with time.

In 2023-24, the University finally regained ownership of the Iron Horse and sought its conservation. The sculpture was extremely degraded with severe corrosion and metal loss. Cracks and open weld joints were visible throughout. Deeply scratched graffiti covered the sculpture’s surface, and numerous sculptural elements were missing entirely. Though it was repainted periodically over the years, it was never done properly and corrosion continued to develop from water ingress, the countless marks, and the clambering of admirers. 

The Iron Horse required an unusually intensive intervention in order to regain its substantially undermined original form and to provide for its long-term preservation. This level of intervention, in which large sections would effectively be rebuilt and sculptural elements restored, necessitated a collaboration of advocacy, expertise and material understanding in multiple fields that is exceptional in typical sculpture conservation practice. The committed collaboration of conservator, metalworker, art administration professional, archivist, and more made the restoration of this amazing artwork possible when its survival was otherwise at risk.