This story was updated on Oct. 17, 2024, to correct an inaccuracy.
John Mellencamp is expected to be present Friday to see an unveiling of a bronze-cast, life-sized statue of himself that’s being installed on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington.
The 73-year-old rock musician hails from the small southern Indiana town of Seymour, but for years has lived near Bloomington on Lake Monroe. It’s not been announced whether the sculpture subject will speak or perform at the dedication, but a news release announced he will be there.
The unveiling begins at 1 p.m. at the IU Auditorium North Garden on Seventh Street. Bloomington native and IU graduate Michael McAuley made the clay bronze-cast sculpture.
Is this the first life-sized bronze sculpture of a famous person on IU’s Bloomington campus?
No, it is not. The statue joins six other bronze sculptures of IU-affiliated men and women who made significant contributions at the university and in Bloomington.
So, who are the other IU-affiliated people of note cast in bronze sculptures on campus?
Hoagy Carmichael
The likeness of Mellencamp is not far from a bronze statue of a musician from another era. In the plaza outside the auditorium near the IU Cinema entrance you’ll find a bronze recreation of Hoagy Carmichael seated at a Steinway grand piano.
Installed in 2008 and also created by McAuley , the sculpture is intended to make passersby feel as if Carmichael is serenading them with “Stardust” or “Georgia on My Mind” as they come and go from the cinema.
Herman B Wells
Not long after longtime IU chancellor and president Herman B Wells died in 2000, Indiana artist Harold “Tuck” Langland created a bronze statue that was installed in the open-air pavilion near the Rose Well House. It’s inside the Sample Gates in what’s called the Old Crescent area. Wells served as IU’s president from 1937 to 1962 and is credited with bringing an international presence to the university. His likeness is animated and holding out a hand.
Ernie Pyle
In October 2014, a bronze sculpture of Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle , sitting on an ammunition box at his typewriter, was put into place outside Franklin Hall, which houses IU’s Media School.
Langland created this piece as well. Pyle had been editor of the Indiana Daily Student newspaper in the 1920s but left his studies at IU to work as a newspaper reporter. He signed on as a correspondent during WWII and was killed by enemy gunfire in 1945.
George Taliaferro
The first African American player drafted by the NFL was IU’s George Taliaferro , who later settled in Bloomington. There’s a bronze statue of him in uniform clutching a football, just outside the North End Zone building at IU’s Memorial Stadium. Taliaferro was 91 when he died in 2018. The memorial statue was erected in 2019. Brian Hanlon was the artist.
Elinor Ostrom
Elinor Ostrom , the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in Economic Sciences, was an IU professor in the College of Arts and Sciences and School of Public and Environmental Affairs. She died in 2012, three years after receiving the award. She advocated the idea that people can create successful societies without government oversight. There’s a bronze statue of Ostrom poised on a bench and smiling in the 100 block of East Seventh Street behind Woodburn Hall. McAuley, who made the Mellencamp and Carmichael statues, was also the artist for this one. It was installed in 2020.
Alfred Kinsey
In the 100 block of Woodlawn Avenue just east of Lindley Hall is a bronze statue of Alfred Kinsey , who studied human sexuality and founded the Kinsey Institute in 1947. His ground-breaking research remains controversial today. The sculpture, installed in 2022, features Kinsey sitting in a chair, a clipboard chart in hand, facing an empty chair. IU sculptor Melanie Cooper Pennington and her students made the sculpture. Kinsey died in 1956.
Reach Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Mellencamp statue just the latest figure immortalized in bronze at Indiana University
Local News