The Armature Revealed:
From the Collection of the MFSM

June 10, 2005 to September 24, 2005

The Armature Revealed features armatures created and used by Marshall Fredericks. After Fredericks' death in 1998, the Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum received most of the content of his studios, which included tools, equipment, sculptures, and armatures. An armature, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is a framework serving as a support core for clay sculpture. They serve as most of the sculptural form's mass. Therefore, a minimal amount of clay can be used and the sculpture is more physically stable.

Fredericks' armatures are composed of various materials. The large scale armatures are composed of wood laths attached to a wooden framework, and shaped Styrofoam. The smaller armatures are wire skeletal forms wrapped around piping.

Included in this one-of-a-kind exhibition are armatures of some of Fredericks well known public works such as Black Elk: Homage to the Great Spirit, Star Dream, Juggler Clown, Baboon with Baby Chimpanzee, and God and the Rainbow.

Dominating the central area of the Temporary Exhibition Gallery is the full-scale armature of Black Elk: Homage to the Great Spirit. Composed of wood laths on a framework, it stands about thirteen and one half feet high, the largest of the armatures. Fredericks received this commission to design a small sculpture of Black Elk which would be used to raise funds to construct the Tower of the Four Winds in Black-Elk Neihardt Park on the High Bluffs West of Blair, Nebraska. Fredericks enlarged Black Elk to full-scale in the late 1990s.