Artist Lauralynn White, dressed as Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Executive Secretary Kate Kimball, shows Wendy King the photo references she used to sculpt a statue she created of Kimball Friday in the Kate Kimball Room during a Docent Tour of Alumni Hall.
NORA SMITH
Staff Writer
Earlier this summer, Chautauqua Literary Arts unveiled an early phase of a new statue dedicated to one of Chautauqua Institution’s trailblazing women: Kate Kimball.
Now, the sculpture of “Mother Superior of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle” Kimball sits at eye level with Chautauquans in Alumni Hall’s Kate Kimball Room.
Kimball was the CLSC’s executive secretary for 39 years and contributed greatly to the CLSC and larger Chautauqua community.
Members of the CLSC are working hard to bring Kimball and her legacy the spotlight they believe she deserves alongside figures like co-founders Bishop John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller.
“It’s time for Kate Kimball to be recognized as a founder of the heart of Chautauqua,” the Alumni Association of the CLSC wrote on its website.
According to “Promoting an Ideology of Culture: The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circles” by James P Eckman, “in 1879, Kimball became one of the most powerful female executives in the United States. She presided over answering correspondence that reached 50,000 letters a year, an office staff of twenty and the registering of all new CLSC students.”
According to the AACLSC’s website, to celebrate the upcoming 150th anniversary of the founding of the CLSC and to honor Kimball, the association is sponsoring “The Kate Kimball Challenge,” which presents participants with “four years to read 18 books from the historical list of CLSC books, one from each decade of the CLSC’s existence, plus one from any decade and Chautauqua’s Heart: A History of the CLSC.”
“She was one of those rare spirits who find their own best realization and highest enjoyment in work for other people,” Frank Chapin Bray wrote for Kimball’s obituary in The Chautauquan Weekly. “She embodied the Chautauqua spirit at its best.”
A group of CLSC women initiated “Welcome Kate Kimball Home” and are working on finalizing the bronze bust of Kimball. It is modeled from a clay prototype, which was revealed during Week One’s “Icons and Instigators: Women Who Change the World,” and will be placed in the grove between the Hall of Philosophy and Alumni Hall.
Megan Smith continued her mother, Joan Smith’s, desire to honor Kimball and was the driving force behind the creation of the sculpture. Other contributors included Karen Paul, leader of the CLSC Mosaic Project; Tony Becket, construction architect for the pedestal and liaison to the bronze foundry; and Lauralynn White, the artist who created the sculpture.
After accepting the responsibility of sculpting Kimball, White took a deep dive into all there was to know about her. She consulted fellow members of the CLSC, archives, books and practically anything she could get her hands on to better understand Kimball and her life.
“[Kimball] was so respected, and for the late 1800s, that’s really amazing for a woman,” White said.
Behind Alumni Hall and along the treeline lies the Kate Kimball Memorial Garden, consisting of two chairs that sandwich a rock and a plaque with Kimball’s name on it. As White sat in the garden, she said, although she had pictures of Kimball for reference, there weren’t any of Kimball over the age of 30. So, wanting to portray Kimball as a mature woman, White depicted her as she thought she would have looked at an older age.
“I wanted her to have a gravitas of a woman who has now answered 50,000 to 70,000 (letters) a year, a woman who has been in charge of 20 other people in an office; all of the references to her talk about this guiding hand,” White said. “… She grew the student body from less than a thousand to over a million in just 35 years.”
As White learned more about Kimball, the passion Kimball had for her work transferred to White’s artistry. White now dresses up as Kimball on Fridays for the Docent Tours at Alumni Hall to raise awareness of Kimball’s profile on the grounds. When walking around dressed as Kimball, though, White said most people don’t have a clue who she is.
“The Literary and Scientific Circle is so closely tied in with the growth of Chautauqua and the Chautauqua movement, and yet everyone knows Vincent and Miller, and no one knows about Kate,” White said. “That’s just so typical of how the world is, and we’re just trying to rectify that.”
White said that the idea of uplifting another woman was what originally made her so initially passionate about the project, and she said that less than 5% of sculptures in the United States are of “actual women.”
“There’s a lot of allegorical women …” White said. “But the majority of the men are real men who accomplish things. So, having sculptures of real women who have accomplished things is important. It’s important not only for young women to see, but I think it’s important for men to see.”
