Medal of Award, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco
John Flanagan American
Not on view
This medal was awarded to leading Ashcan School painter William James Glackens who received a Bronze Medal for his submissions to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, including for The Green Car (37.763). Although Flanagan produced portrait busts and large relief sculptures, he established his artistic reputation as one of this country’s pre-eminent Beaux-Arts medalists. The obverse depicts a male and a female nude flanking a rising sun. They represent the joining of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at the Isthmus of Panama. The reverse presents a detailed rendering of Thomas Hastings’s Tower of Jewels, the architectural focus of the fair, behind Alexander Stirling Calder’s Fountain of Energy. They are flanked by palm fronds.
