Olympic Wannabees

This sculpture, one of two by the same artist on The Children’s Museum campus, portrays five individual children in various stages of performing a cartwheel–the ultimate expression of a carefree childhood.  According to the artist, the idea for this sculpture evolved as she saw children avidly watching the 1996 Olympics.  “I thought of children playing and competing with each other, trying to ‘be’ Olympic gymnasts,” she said. Although bronze is a very flexible medium, the poses of the children nevertheless posed a technical challenge to make them seem frozen in midair.

The sculpture was dedicated “In loving memory of Raymond E Crandall and Susan Elizabeth Crandall 1997.” Several casts of this piece are in collections in other states.

Glenna Goodacre (b. 1938) is a nationally-recognized figurative sculptor and the creator of many well-known bronze artworks, portraits, and monuments, including the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, DC; the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia; the over-life-sized, full-length portrait of Ronald Reagan at his memorial library; and the design for the Sacajawea U.S. dollar coin.  Many of her works exist in multiple casts across the country. She attended Colorado College and the Art Students’ League in New York City, intending to be a painter, but discovered sculpture while she was there. A native of Texas, Goodacre has been an academician of the National Academy of Design since 1994 and a fellow of the National Sculpture Society since 1981. She currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and retired from sculpting in 2016 after destroying the molds for all her previous works so they could not be reissued after her death.