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A tale of nine busts
If the busts of the nine presidents displayed in the McAlister Audtorium could speak, they would have an interesting story to tell.
The late A. Wolfe Davidson, a renowned South Carolina artist and Russian immigrant, sculpted all of the bronze renderings. Davidson, who died in 1981, crafted seven of the pieces in exchange for free tuition and room and board for his daughter, Dorothy Davidson McCulloch.
After McCulloch's graduation in 1960, Davidson was commissioned to complete busts of presidents Gordon Blackwell and John E. Johns.
Now living in Alpharetta, Ga., McCulloch, says her father and grandmother were smuggled into South Carolina during the Russian Revolution through an underground railroad. A. Wolfe Davidson, then a young man, had studied art in Russia.
In exchange for free tuition to attend Clemson University in the early 1930s, Davidson sculpted the tiger that is now positioned outside the Death Valley Football Stadium. In 1936, the artist and his new wife moved to Greenville where he taught art at Greenville High School until 1943.
In the mid 1950s, Davidson was an art instructor at Brenau College (Gainesville, Ga.) when his daughter decided to attend Furman.
"My father was extremely close to Charles E. Blackwood, who was the head of the art department at Furman. Together, they went to see Dr. Plyer about doing presidential busts in exchange for tuition and room and board for me. Dr. Plyer liked the idea."
In addition to the Furman presidential busts, Davidson also sculpted the statue of Thomas Green Clemson that is stationed in front of Tillman Hall on the Clemson campus. He also crafted the statue of Senator Strom Thurmond that is positioned in front of the University of South Carolina Law Library.