A history of Nashville's Athena, from the man who built it.
In The Nashville Athena: Goddess in Progress, sculptor Alan LeQuire gives his firsthand account of the meticulous research and arduous construction of the forty-two-foot-tall Athena Parthenos statue in the Nashville Parthenon. LeQuire sculpted, cast and constructed Athena from 1982 to 1990, and returned in 2002 to gild and paint the statue. Here he tells the full story for the first time and includes diagrams to help explain the proportions of the colossal statue, technical drawings of the armature structure, and extensive photography of the work in progress.
With supporting essays by archaeologist Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Nashville Parthenon Director Wesley Paine, and architect Anne Roos, LeQuire includes the history of the Parthenon in Nashville as well as current scholarship about the original Athena Parthenos, placing the work in context as experimental archaeology.
