VA -- Richmond -- Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.234.177.119 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1] MONMAU_060318_02.JPG
|
[2] MONMAU_060318_05.JPG
|
[3] MONMAU_060318_14.JPG
|
[4] MONMAU_060318_24.JPG
|
[5] MONMAU_060318_31.JPG
|
[6] MONMAU_060318_39.JPG
|
[7] MONMAU_060318_44.JPG
|
[8] MONMAU_060318_50.JPG
|
[9] MONMAU_060318_73.JPG
|
- Wikipedia Description: Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Matthew Fontaine Maury Monument, is a partially deconstructed memorial installed along Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue depicting Matthew Fontaine Maury and commemorating his contributions to both his Confederate naval service and as the contemporaneous "father of modern oceanography and naval meteorology" with the engraved moniker "Pathfinder of the Seas". Between July 2–9, 2020, the bronze statue of Maury and other sculptural elements were removed from the monument by the city of Richmond, in response to local protests connected to nationwide unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
Conception and Creation of Monument
The sculpture was designed by Frederick William Sievers and unveiled on November 11, 1929. The "Pathfinder of the Seas" monument of Matthew Fontaine Maury is located on Monument Avenue at Belmont Avenue.
In 1915 the Matthew Fontaine Maury Association was founded with the purpose of erecting a monument to Maury though serious fundraising did not happen until after the end of the First World War. Eventually the United Daughters of the Confederacy joined in the fundraising, the State of Virginia and the City of Richmond each donated $1,000, and even President Wilson, a native Virginian, joined the Association.
The committee selected Richmond sculptor Frederick William Sievers, the author of many Lost Cause memorials, to produce the work and he created the "most allegorical of Richmond's monuments." The monument was unveiled as part of an Armistice Day celebration on November 11, 1929.
The seated figure of Maury faced eastward, toward the Atlantic Ocean that the "Pathfinder of the Seas" charted. He holds in his left hand a pencil and compass and in his right hand a copy of his charts. Beside his left foot is his book, Physical Geography of the Sea, as well as a Bible, indicating the central role that faith played in Maury's life. A globe of the Earth mounted on the upper pedestal is tilted slightly on its axis behind his head. It represents both land and sea, and the woman standing calmly is a representation of Mother Nature between the land and sea. Around the base of the globe are depictions of people clinging to a sinking boat in bad weather representing the dangers of the sea with a woman in the center, and on the right (north) side of the globe there is a farmer, boy and a dog representing Maury's work promoting land weather service, which dates back further than 1853.
Dismantling of Monument
On July 2, 2020, during an emergency declaration by Governor of Virginia Ralph Northam due to unrest following police brutality in Minneapolis, parts of the memorial were taken down at the direction of the mayor of Richmond, Levar Stoney. The bronze statue of a chair-seated Maury (representing his handicap) on the lower semi-circular sub-pedestal was quickly removed due to its small size and accessibility; a bronze sculpture higher up on the round main pedestal, featuring a globe sculpture with various figures representing Maury's oceanographic travel and work remained until a week later on July 9 and was removed amid litigation to stop removal of additional memorials temporarily due to concern that the mayor was without authority to remove any of the historic monuments.
While the statue of Maury and the globe were removed, the pedestal and sub-pedestal portions of the monument remained. As of October 2020, the statue's next permanent destination remained unclear.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].