The Martin Luther statue on campus is looking good after an extensive “rubdown” last spring. Years of corrosion have been scrubbed off and his warm brown patina restored.

Conservators from Midwest Art Conservation Center did the work, overseen by Kate Elliott, Luther associate professor of art history and curator of the Fine Arts Collection. They began the process, which took about a week, by washing the statue and removing corrosion. Two layers of patina were then applied, followed by coatings of wax—first hot then cold. Afterward, cracks in the the statue’s base were repaired.

The statue was a gift from the Norwegian Lutheran Synod ministers’ wives in 1911 to celebrate the college’s 50th anniversary. It is a third-generation sculpture, cast from a replica of Ernest Friedrich Riestschel’s original sculpture of Martin Luther in Worms, Germany.

Plans are also in the works to add new lighting and limestone landscaping. Landscape designer Jens Jensen, who created a campus design for the college’s 50th anniversary, also designed the base of the statue and chose its location. In a letter to President C.K. Preus (class of 1873) in June 1911, Jensen wrote: “A statue ought to have a background of green to be ideally situated . . . it seems to me that the Luther statue should be placed on the campus with a good background of foliage.”

The statue still does have a backdrop of foliage, and once again it projects a burnished glow amid the green.