The sculpture in the foyer of the Frank H. McClung Museum is one of the 1923 original five castings of The Vine, by sculptor Harriet W. Frishmuth (1880–1980). The bronze figure, for which dancer Desha Podgorska Delteil was the model, is nine feet tall. It was cast by Gorham Company Founders.
Frishmuth was born in Philadelphia. She studied briefly at Académie Rodin, receiving critiques from Auguste Rodin, and with Henri-Désiré Gauquié and Jean Antoine Injalbert in Paris; for two years with Cuno von Uechtritz-Steinkirch in Berlin; with Karl Bitter in New York; and at the Art Students League of New York, under Gutzon Borglum and Hermon Atkins MacNeil. She then worked in New York as an assistant to Bitter and performed dissections at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her first commissioned piece was in 1910 from the New York County Medical Society, which commissioned her to do a bas-relief. She became well known for her beautiful renderings of females in bronze, particularly dancers. Her work was exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the Salon in Paris, the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939–40) and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. One of her last exhibits was in New York City in 1929. Although she remained active in the art world for decades afterwards, the Great Depression caused her to close her studio in New York in the 1930s and return to Philadelphia. She died in Connecticut in 1980 at the age of 99.
She received a number of recognitions and honors over the course of her career: the St. Gaudens prize (while still a student), several awards from the National Academy of Design, an honorable mention from the Golden Gate International Exposition, and the Joan of Arc Silver Medal from the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.
The Vine was willed to UT in 1958 by Frederick T. Bonham, a 1909 UT Law School student. His will left the statue and $10,000 for its installation to UT and stipulated that it be placed in a “water setting in the central lobby of a museum.” The will provided that if the statue were not erected within five years, the $10,000 be given to the School of Journalism and the sculpture be sold, with the proceeds used for journalism scholarships. The statue originally stood in the formal gardens at WalHall, Bonham’s estate in Riverside, Connecticut.