Minerva+in+a+Chariot

Date: 1894
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1929/1929.6.121_1a.jpg?itok=43p4rEY3 width="381" height="268" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/minerva-chariot-23938"]] || Title: **Minerva in a Chariotca**

Artist: **Abbott Handerson Thayer** Born: Boston, Massachusetts 1849 Died: Monadnock, New Hampshire 1921\

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 38 1/8 x 53 3/4 in. (96.7 x 136.4 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Accession: 1929.6.121 || In 1894, Abbott Thayer won a commission to create a large mosaic panel of the goddess Minerva for the Library of Congress, and he painted this oil sketch before executing the final version in glass. He was to receive $4000 for the completed project, but engineers and architects at the library quickly grew frustrated with Thayer’s unwillingness to comply with their instructions. After years of argument, the commission was given to another prominent muralist, Elihu Vedder. His Minerva now presides over the landing of what was once the library’s main staircase. (Cartwright, “Reading Rooms: Interpreting the American Public Library Mural, 1890-1930,” PhD diss., Univ. Michigan, 1994)
 * Luce Center Label: **

Thayer, Roosevelt, and Camouflage Thayer in On Camouflage Thayer Writes for Scientific Monthly
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">About the Artist <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Smithsonian American Art Museum: Abbott Handerson Thayer <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Links: **