ROTC switches nude statues for decency’s sake

A large bronze sculpture sits in the Smith Research Center, where it’s been for years. But something is different now.

“Adam and Eve,” a sculpture by former IU professor and sculptor Jean-Paul Darriau, has been turned around. While the nude Adam used to face out a window, with Eve facing in toward the entranceway, the sculpture was moved so that the male figure now faces inside, with the female figure facing the window.

“It was this summer that someone reported it,” said Sherry Rouse, curator of campus art. Rouse is responsible for the art in buildings around campus, including paintings, sculptures and other pieces on IU property.

Rouse said members of the IU Reserve Officer Training Corps moved the statue after the ROTC department moved from its Third Street location to the Smith Research Center on East 10th Street.

Rouse said they expressed concerns that “women and children use the building,” and might be offended by the presence of a nude female statue. Representatives of the ROTC program did not return requests for comment by press time.

“The funny thing to me is, now we’re just looking at full frontal man rather than a woman,” Rouse said.

The statue’s presence in the Smith Center raises questions about the appropriateness of some fine art on campus. Rouse said she might have to move “Adam and Eve,” though she currently has no plans to relocate it.

Other sculptures of Darriau’s still dot the Bloomington landscape. “Red, Blond, Black and Olive,” a sculpture of two faces looking at each other, sits in Miller-Showers Park between College Avenue and Walnut Street. An earlier version of “Adam and Eve,” titled “The Space Between Adam and Eve,” sits behind Kirkwood Hall.

Rouse maintains it was “wrong” to move “Adam and Eve.”

“The statue is still the way they left it,” she said, “but I think I’ll have to find a new home for it eventually.”