18 / AMAM.OBERLIN.EDU HIGHLIGHT / ARTIST PROFILE PUBLIC ART ICON ATHENA TACHA DEDICATES CHARLES RIVER INSTALLATION ON CAMPUS Athena Tacha, a prominent figure in public art who earned a master’s degree at Oberlin College in 1961, returned to campus for the dedication of Charles River, a unique aluminum sculpture she presented to Oberlin as a gift. A former curator at the Allen Memorial Art Museum and studio art faculty member, Tacha created the work in 1974 during a fellowship at MIT. This spring, the sculpture was installed and dedicated at its new home in the Nord Performing Arts Annex, next to Hall Auditorium. The celebration honored Tacha’s contribution to public art and her lasting impact on the Oberlin community. In January 1974, while a fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, Athena Tacha was encouraged to propose an ideal project for the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge. Although her idea for a terraced sculpture that would have been built in stone or concrete with pebblefilled terraces and plantings was never realized, it was developed through several drawings and a large cardboard model which was cast into this unique aluminum sculpture. The patterns and rhythms of nature have inspired this and many other of Tacha’s works, such as Streams, also installed in Oberlin along PlumCreek, which was her first public sculpture. Among the more than 40 competitions that she has won, her major commissions include those at Cleveland’s CaseWestern Reserve University, the Friendship Heights metro station inWashington D.C., the Muhammad Ali Plaza in Louisville, Kentucky, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in Trenton, and a two-acre park in downtown Philadelphia. With Charles River, Tacha indicated that she wanted to “create an ambiguous, fluctuating space through a succession of changing rhythms, thus confusing normal expectations about gravity or horizontal/vertical perception. Walking is a rhythmical beat—a time relationship between body and ground. Steps or ground irregularities can modulate this rhythm, as my step-sequences operate both visually and kinesthetically, allowing one to experience the universe’s pulsating space-time.” While enhancing the Oberlin campus, Charles River celebrates Tacha’s substantial body of work and the role that Oberlin played in shaping her personal and professional journey as a major figure in public art. Subsequent to earning an MFA in sculpture in Athens, Greece, an MA in art history fromOberlin, and a PhD in aesthetics from the Sorbonne in Paris, she served as the first curator of modern and contemporary art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, prior to taking up a faculty position in sculpture in the College’s art department in 1973, fromwhich she retired in 1999. Above left: Tacha poses with her artwork Charles River Step Sculpture (Homage to Heraclitus) (1974/1988) shortly after its creation. Above right: Tacha with her husband Richard Spear, who taught art history at Oberlin College from 1964 until 2000 and was director at the Allen from 1972 to 1983.
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