La Montagne sculpture brings early American Modernism to Middlebury
Anyone who has walked down the hill by the chapel recently may have noticed a new addition to the landscape. In the shadows of the tree grove lies a sculpture of a figure — one that is difficult to interpret from afar. A number of students have expressed confusion over exactly what the statue depicts and how it came to be displayed outside Gifford Hall. Upon a closer look, as the bronze cast glimmers in the sun on a nice day, a plaque reveals the work’s name: “La Montagne,” French for “The Mountain,” by Parisian-sculptor Gaston Lachaise.