page_title: The Great God Pan (sculpture)
section_title: Bronze casting
hierarchical_section_title: The Great God Pan (sculpture) / History / Bronze casting
caption_attribution_description: English: "The Laughing Faun" &#8212; bronze mask for a fountain.
context_page_description: The Great God Pan is a bronze sculpture by American sculptor George Grey Barnard. Since 1907, it has been a fixture of the Columbia University campus in Manhattan, New York City.
context_section_description: Barnard wanted his plaster sculpture cast in bronze in a single piece—as opposed to assembled from separately-cast pieces—but could not find a French foundry willing to attempt it. French-born Eugene F. Aucaigne, manager of the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company of Mount Vernon, New York, took on the challenge. Following months of preparation and construction of an extremely complex and heavy mold, Aucaigne oversaw the successful casting of Pan in bronze in August 1898. It was the largest bronze sculpture cast in a single piece in the United States at that time. 
  Barnard's plaster model for the sculpture's base featured a rock surrounded by reeds and cattails, with a standing crane to visually balance Pan's head. He also modeled Laughing Faun, a small mask to cover the water spouts around the sculpture's base. The idea of Pan as a fountain sculpture was abandoned following the Parks Commission's rejection; Barnard's base was never cast in bronze, and the faun masks were not used.
  Barnard tried to manipulate the Parks Commission into reconsidering its rejection of Pan, presenting the sculpture's placement in Central Park as a fait accompli in a national magazine. When the commission balked at this, a boulder fronting on Central Park Lake was proposed as an alternative site. The commission dithered for four more years, before again rejecting Pan for Central Park.
caption: Laughing Faun, 1896
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