Ted Geisel's Nightmare

When I was a high school student in Springfield, I used to spend a fair amount of time in the Quadrangle across the street from Classical High. A Carnegie library formed one side of the square, and museums of art, science, and history formed the others. I thought it was one of the prettiest places that could ever be. Of course, what did I know? I'd never been anywhere.

Fast forward forty years. I've travelled all around the country, to Canada and Mexico, the West Indies, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and I still think it's one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. I can't say there's any building in the world I like better than the George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum. Not even the Louvre. Or the Prado. Or the Tate. Or the cathedral of Chartres.

Of course, when you like something, you want it to stay just the same. I'm irritated no end by the fence that's gone up around the Quadrangle, and I'm not in love with the Dr. Seuss sculptures, either. I believe they were crowded into the middle of the Quad to attract people into the museums, although I think they would have been more appropriately situated in Forest Park, the place where Theodore Geisel grew up, hung around, and presumably got the inspiration for his fantastical creatures.

Now when you look at the GWVS from the other end of the quad, you have to look past a life-sized statue of a pensive Ted Geisel seated at his drawing board, and through a giant Horton the elephant. It's as though Geisel's imaginings have been turned to bronze behind his head.