Storybook Time Sculpture:
The City of Tarpon Springs and the Public Art Committee are thrilled to have “Storybook Time,” by renowned artist Glenna Goodacre installed at the Cultural Center, 101 South Pinellas Avenue. Captured in their expressions, as is Goodacre’s signature style, is the timeless joy and wonder to be shared through reading together. The installation honors the site of the first library in Tarpon Springs established 1916 and as a gateway to the City’s current library. The bronze mother and daughter sculptures were created in 1998. Edition #18. Tarpon Springs’ second Goodacre installation is located at the west end of the Sponge Docks in the roundabout. The four Greek nymphs are called “The Naiads.”
About the Artist:
Today, Glenna Goodacre is most readily recognized as the sculptor of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial at the Vietnam “Wall” in Washington, D.C. Since it was installed on the National Mall in 1993, the bronze memorial has been seen by millions of visitors to Washington and has been filmed and photographed extensively by the media. But for over 20 years, before she created the women’s memorial, Glenna was well known for her portrait busts and figures and for her interesting sculptural compositions of active children, which continue to be her favorite subjects. And before creating her first three-dimensional work, she had a successful career for many years as a painter. Her pieces are in numerous private, corporate, municipal, national and international collections. She has over 40 bronze portraits in public collections in the United States, including sculptures of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Barbara Jordan, Katherine Anne Porter, Lt. Karl W. Richter, Dr. Norris Bradbury, Greer Garson and Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold. She created a 7’ standing portrait of President Ronald Reagan this year for the National Cowboy Hall Of Fame.
In an international competition for The Irish Famine Memorial in 1997, she was selected as the winning sculptor for a proposed monument to the Irish in downtown Philadelphia near Penn’s Landing. When finally funded, approved, created and cast, the massive bronze will be Goodacre’s most ambitious public sculpture with 35 life-size figures. The installation is projected for some time after the year 2000.
Her work is widely exhibited and has won many awards from the National Sculpture Society, Allied Artists of America, Knickerbocker Artists and the National Academy of Design. She has been a member of National Sculpture and Allied Artists since 1977, won the National Academy of Design Gold Medal in 1978, was elected a Fellow of the National Sculpture Society in 1981, was awarded the Knickerbocker Artists’ Gold Medal in 1993, and in 1994 she was elected a member of the National Academy of Design, where her work won an award of merit at their annual exhibition in 1997. American Artist Magazine named her an American Art Master in 1996. For over 10 years she has been a participant in the Art in Embassies program with work exhibited in our embassies in such diverse countries as Russia, Niger, France and Guinea. In 1994 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from her alma mater Colorado College, and in 1996 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Texas Tech University.
She was born in Texas and began her art career there, graduated from Colorado College and studied at the Art Students League in New York. She divides her time between Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she has maintained a studio since 1983, and Dallas, Texas, where her husband has a law practice. Goodacre passed away in April 2020 at the age of 80.
