{"id":137168,"date":"2026-03-13T08:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137168\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T08:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T08:51:11","slug":"what-about-the-woman-behind-the-man-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/137168\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What about the woman behind the man?\u2019 \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

Photo by Eliza Boylan<\/a> for The Lafayette <\/p>\n

The Marquise de Lafayette is the first permanent statue of a woman on the college\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n

Audrey Flack knew her sculpture of Adrienne de Noailles would be her last.<\/p>\n

The project was all-consuming: de Noailles, the wife of the Marquis de Lafayette, would wake her up in the middle of the night, demanding shoulders. Flack scrutinized materials from the Lafayette College archives, weighing how to best capture the contours of the French noblewoman\u2019s face. Over time, she grew to identify with her.<\/p>\n

Flack, a renowned painter and sculptor, died in 2024 before the sculpture was completed. She was 93. Her final work \u2014 the bronze bust of the Marquise de Lafayette \u2014\u00a0was installed Saturday on the steps of Skillman Library, capping the year\u2019s annual Council of Lafayette Women Conference.<\/p>\n

Depicted waist-up in a shocking turquoise, the Marquise\u2019s expression is calm and placid. Her hair falls in loose coils around her neck, and a length of fabric waterfalls off her shoulders, dipping toward a blocky plinth made of stones from Skillman\u2019s original facade.<\/p>\n

\"\"The bust\u2019s bright green hue is expected to darken and deepen over time. (Photo by Elisabeth Seidel<\/a>)<\/p>\n

In some ways, said emeritus art professor Robert Mattison, the statue is \u201call women.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bust stemmed from a visit Flack made to campus in 2015, when she noticed a lack of art depicting women \u2014 \u201cWhat about the woman behind the man?\u201d Mattison, a long-time friend of Flack, recalled her asking.<\/p>\n

After a visit to the archives, Flack soon became entranced by the Marquise, though the chance to bring her to life would not come until 2023, when the college began exploring art commissions to mark its bicentennial.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have such immense respect for her as a feminist, groundbreaking artist,\u201d college President Nicole Hurd said about Flack. \u201cAnd I have so much respect for Adrienne as the Marquis\u2019 partner, and someone who, frankly, he wouldn\u2019t have been able to do what he did without her.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had her own voice,\u201d Hurd said of the Marquise. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful to celebrate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Marquise joins three campus sculptures<\/a> depicting men, including two of her husband. One-hundred and twenty yards away, on the opposite side of Colton Chapel, a youthful depiction of the Marquis stands with one hand on his sword, facing Easton\u2019s downtown. Early conversations about the bust included whether she should be placed near him.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe can hold her own,\u201d said sculptor Brian Booth Craig, Flack\u2019s longtime assistant, who completed the piece after her death.<\/p>\n

Craig first met Flack as an undergraduate and worked closely with her on numerous projects. The role of the artist\u2019s assistant, he said, is to make the \u201cwhole thing run seamlessly\u201d before going off \u201cinto the shadows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finishing the piece was not all that different from their usual collaboration: Flack sculpted the original at a smaller size, and Craig was charged with scaling it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy job is to get in tune with what the artist\u2019s intentions are, and in a lot of ways, Audrey had already done all that communing with Adrienne,\u201d Craig said. \u201cThen it was just for me to be like, \u2018OK, Audrey, I\u2019m going to do it. I\u2019m going to make it the way you designed it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing carried its own symbolism. As Craig executed Flack\u2019s final work \u2014 the pair\u2019s last project together \u2014 he was also preparing for the unveiling of his first public commission this fall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bittersweet thing is that Audrey won\u2019t be there to see it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Why the Marquise?<\/p>\n

By all accounts, Adrienne de Noailles was a devoted wife and mother. She supported her husband\u2019s liberal ideals and assisted him in his efforts to promote human rights.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Marquis and Marquise de Lafayette were 16 and 14 years old, respectively, at the time of their marriage. (Photo courtesy of Lafayette College Archives)<\/p>\n

Born into one of France\u2019s wealthiest noble families, the Marquise narrowly avoided the guillotine during the French Revolution\u2019s Reign of Terror. Her sister, mother and grandmother were not so fortunate. Later, she helped establish the Cimeti\u00e8re de Picpus, a private cemetery reserved for victims of the guillotine and their descendants.<\/p>\n

At 35, after failing to persuade Austrian leaders to release her imprisoned husband, she volunteered to incarcerate herself and her two youngest daughters alongside him for two years.<\/p>\n

Diane Shaw, the college\u2019s former archivist and one of the leading historians on the Marquise\u2019s life, called the decision a \u201cremarkable act of self-sacrifice,\u201d and one that contributed to her early death at 48.<\/p>\n

\u201cLafayette was in solitary confinement when she got to him,\u201d Shaw wrote in an email. \u201cOne scholar has credited her with saving his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurd, who bonded with Flack over a shared interest in the divine feminine (Hurd\u2019s doctoral thesis was on female saints), called the addition of the Marquise one of the \u201cbig moments\u201d of the college\u2019s bicentennial celebration<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many ways to bring female voice into the world, and this feels like an important moment to do it,\u201d said Hurd, who first saw the statue during the reveal when she, Craig, Mattison and Student Government President Allie Waxman \u201828<\/a> ceremoniously pulled away the maroon fabric draped over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes female voice comes from places that people don\u2019t expect it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\"\"Attendees of the sculpture\u2019s dedication swarm the Marquise shortly after her reveal. (Photo by Elisabeth Seidel<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Campus reaction to the bust was mixed. The color of the Marquise, which Hurd dubbed \u201cTiffany Blue,\u201d has been a common topic of discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s beautiful, and shockingly green,\u201d said Noa Stahlberg \u201828, a student in attendance at the reveal. \u201cTwo things can be true at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bust\u2019s bright hue isn\u2019t permanent, however; the patina is expected to darken and deepen over time.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, several students enjoying the first turn of spring on the Quad said they had noticed the library\u2019s new addition, but didn\u2019t know who she was.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy fault for not going to the ceremony, but I\u2019m hoping that there was a good reason for her being there,\u201d Lauren Haber \u201829 said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that with all the information that they continue to send out about it, people start to understand the story more,\u201d Maddie Miniutti \u201826 said. \u201cHistory has this way of erasing women from history, and so I think making efforts in order to show how important women are \u2014 it\u2019s a big deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others are not sure that the life of the Marquise measures up to the weight the sculpture has been given by the college administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not a bad thing to have more representations of women in Lafayette\u2019s public spaces but real impact only happens when the community is invested and people understand the purpose,\u201d wrote Mary Armstrong, the head of the Women\u2019s, Gender & Sexuality Studies department, in an email.<\/p>\n

Armstrong noted the lack of broad community input on the subject of the sculpture; the bust received review and approval from the college\u2019s bicentennial committee, roughly 50 college constituents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe beauty of this bicentennial is that there were ideas that came from the community, there are ideas that came from students,\u201d Hurd said. \u201cIt\u2019s come from all different directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of whether you find the statue itself inspiring or dreadful, I think the administration missed some important opportunities,\u201d Armstrong wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Eliza Boylan for The Lafayette The Marquise de Lafayette is the first permanent statue of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-137168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}