When Louis Houck learned that some furnishings at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis would be sold, he proposed that instead they simply be given to an “impoverished” little institution like the Southeast Missouri Normal. In this way he filled the school’s new buildings with carpet, furniture, chandeliers, paintings, ornaments, and woodwork. What he could not secure from the fair for free, he purchased, for $1,888.25 to be exact.
Houck bought a collection of ancient, medieval, and modern works of art reproduced by German artist August Gerber, donating them to the school with the wish that a room be made available in Academic Hall so that the statuary would be permanently displayed.
The fifty-eight reproductions – including Diana, Minerva, Homer, Hercules, Daedalus and Icarus, Socrates, Jupiter, Juno, Hermes, Venus de Milo, and Caesar – were crafted by Gerber using his “special and secret substance” composed in part of alabaster, and had been displayed at the World’s Fair’s German Educational Exhibit. Being of the same dimensions and finished in either bronze or marble, they appear in every respect to be exact replicas of the original masterpieces, so much so that their well-respected Cologne-born sculptor Gerber received a “Grand Prize” from fair judges.
The statues remained in Academic until 1959 when they were scattered around campus to make more classrooms.
Donations raised by class of 1957 eventually brought the Gerber Statuary Collection back together. Today they are housed at Kem Statuary Hall in the Alumni Center, with the plaster works on display at the Crisp Museum.
