Bacchante and Infant Faun Boston Public Art Boston, MA

Bacchante and Infant Faun

Boston Public Library Frederick W. MacMonnies, Sculptor Bronze

“Banned in Boston, 1896,” the Boston Globe states.

This delightful light-hearted bronze piece was a gift from architect Charles Follen McKim, the designer of the original Boston Public Library. The statue depicts a nude woman holding an infant. The Boston Globe suggested that it be replaced by a “nice moral statue of a Sunday school teacher”. Further com- ments from a local minister called it “a memorial to the worst type of harlotry with which the world was ever afflicted.” McKim decided to remove it from the courtyard fountain and donate it to the New York Metropolitan Museum. The MET gladly ac- cepted.

Several years later, George Robert White, a Boston philanthropist, obtained a second “Bacchante and Infant Faun” casting and offered it to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts which they gladly accepted as well. Boston Public Library Court Yard still has the copy and not the original gifted piece to this day. Although not an original, “Bacchante and Infant Faun” defiantly and playfully dance on the fountain’s waters, meant to be an oasis for hard working academics everywhere and in every field of study.