MU MU Libraries
home Events and Exhibits Gift of Art Provides Inspiration and Beauty to Grand Reading Room at Ellis Library

Gift of Art Provides Inspiration and Beauty to Grand Reading Room at Ellis Library

Students returning to Ellis Library’s Grand Reading Room this fall will be greeted by four new inspiring sculptures – Lunas, Lightspire, Photon and Solaris. The bronze sculptures, by contemporary master, M.L. Snowden, were given to the University Libraries by Drs. Holly Orr and Mark Haskell Monroe. Mark’s father, Haskell Monroe, served as the University of Missouri’s chancellor from 1987 to 1993.

M.L. Snowden is the sole living inheritor of select 19th century marble carving, finishing, casting and bronze patination techniques from the Paris studios of Auguste Rodin and Antonin Mercié. She sculpted alongside her father for seventeen years as an apprentice and as a professional in Snowden Studios. In 1990, she inherited a collection of 38 of the original sculpting tools from the Rodin Studios. Rodin’s tools were bequeathed to M.L. Snowden’s father by the Swiss sculptor, Robert Georges Eberhard.

M.L. Snowden has won the world’s most prestigious sculpture prize, The International Rodin Competition in Tokyo, Japan, and most recently was awarded the inaugural Presidential Order of Merit “In Recognition of Significant Contributions to the Betterment of Humanity Through Art,” presented by the Fine Art Foundation with the sculptor’s work recently added to the Presidential art collection at the White House. The sculptor maintains studios in southern California, Paris and Austria.

Learn more about the artist and her art:
M.L. Snowden Art
The M.L. Snowden Museum