Great Goat-Man God Has A History of Mythic Proportions

The god on the lawn in front of Lewisohn Hall is a drifter. Exactly 101 years ago, the Clark family (heirs to the Singer Sewing Company fortune) gave the three ton bronze The Great God Pan by American sculptor George Grey Barnard to Columbia. The University, however, was not supposed to be Pan’s home.

George Grey Barnard began to work on the sculpture in 1894 and planned for it to be installed in the entrance of the Dakota apartment building (yes, where John Lennon lived and died). But when family patriarch Alfred Corning Clark—who was a dedicated patron of Barnard—died in 1896, the plan to place the sculpture inside the upscale Upper West Side residence was derailed.

The Clark family subsequently offered to give the statue to the City of New York with the stipulation that it be placed in Central Park. The Board of Parks, however, refused the gift, causing quite a scandal in the New York City press. Despite other cities’ interest in taking the statue, Pan remained in storage until he arrived at Columbia as a gift from Alfred Corning Clark’s widow and son about 10 years later.

The Great God Pan was designed to be a fountain, which is why there are spigots on its granite base. Its original home was a custom-made pool surrounded by tiled pavement in the northeast corner of campus. In 1959, however, Pan and his oasis had to make room for the new Engineering building, and the Committee of Artistic Properties—a group of trustees and administrators—held a vote to determine Pan’s fate. The options on the ballot—copies of which are in the Art Properties archives—were:

1. Put Pan in front of Schermerhorn.
2. Try to sell Pan before putting him in front of Schermerhorn or elsewhere.
3. Spend the money to send Pan to the country.
4. Destroy him.

No private collector or museum showed an interest in either paying for Pan or receiving him as a gift, and the committee declined to sell him for scrap metal or to spend the money to move him off campus. So, he was placed between Schermerhorn and St. Paul’s Chapel. Despite a memo from the chairman of Artistic Properties citing trustees’ worries about “the confrontation of pagan and Christian symbols” created by placing a nude antique deity in front of the chapel, Pan stayed there until construction on Avery in 1975 forced him to the lawn in front of Lewisohn.

While Pan now seems to have a permanent home on the Morningside campus, the University community still occasionally mistreats him. A few years ago, an anonymous and mischievous student or group of students gave him a shaving cream bikini.