Alan LeQuire

Who is Alan LeQuire?

Alan LeQuire is an American sculptor from Nashville, Tennessee. Many of his sculptures are installed in the city.

LeQuire's father, Virgil, was a physician and researcher on the faculty of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. His mother, Louise, was a painter, art teacher, and writer. The young LeQuire showed an early interest in sculpture. While an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, he studied independently under professor of sculpture Puryear Mims and Middle Tennessee State University sculptor Jim Gibson. He spent his senior year in France, studied art history, and earned a degree in English. After a year in Rome learning bronze casting as an assistant to New York artist Milton Hebald, LeQuire entered the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.

LeQuire specializes in work of great scale, usually large public commissions. His most famous work is the replica of Phidias' Athena Parthenos that stands in the naos of the full-scale reconstruction of the Acropolis Parthenon in Nashville's Centennial Park. This statue, cast in a composite of gypsum and fiberglass on a steel and aluminum armature, is currently the largest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western World, standing almost 42 feet tall. LeQuire received the commission for the work in 1982, and it was unveiled in 1990 in a stark, white finish. In 2002, LeQuire oversaw a polychroming and gilding process that brought the statue to an appearance close to what ancient Greek visitors may have seen at the original Parthenon.