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Art of Mann

Among the original Mann building’s most distinctive treasures is the artwork that reflected the library’s cultural function as an intellectual common ground for the departments of the upper campus. One of the most remarkable of these pieces in the original building is a 31 foot frieze, designed and carved by renowned artist and sculptor Elfriede Abbe, which was installed on one end of the 2nd floor’s Current Periodicals Reading as an anonymous gift to the library in 1956. Human figures on the frieze denote individual disciplines in the study of agriculture and human ecology, and the sculpture as a whole celebrates the scientific and educational contributions these fields make to the quality of life. Also notable are the two gracefully stylized human figures depicted in wooden inlay panels on opposite ends of the 2nd floor card catalog hall. Shortly after the building’s opening the State Architect of the New York commissioned these two figures to evoke the agrarian foundations of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Two members of the State Architect’s office (Frisbie Sanders, designer, and Frances Hector, detailer) used six tropical hardwoods to create the figures.