A new book featuring essays on the works of Christian Petersen will be published by Iowa State University Press next fall in conjunction with a Petersen exhibit at the Brunnier Art Museum in the Scheman Building.

Hundreds of Petersen’s works will be featured in the book, many of which the public never has seen before, said Marilyn Vaughan, communications director for University Museums.

“We’ve had a tremendous response,” she said. “This is going to be a fascinating and in-depth exhibit.”

Petersen is known at ISU for his campus works, including “Fountain of Four Seasons,” “The Boy and Girl” and “Ring of Life.” He was the university’s resident sculptor from 1934 to 1951.

The exhibit at the Brunnier Art Museum is slated to run August through December of 2000, Vaughan said.

Vaughan is the project coordinator for the book of essays and also is working with museum staff to set up the exhibit.

“The most important objective for the book is to give Christian Petersen national recognition and a place in art history,” she said.

The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of September, she said.

ISU alumni from across the country are donating and loaning their works by Petersen for the exhibit. Vaughan has received several monetary donations for the project and exhibit as well.

“It wouldn’t be possible without the contributions,” she said.

The new book will include the first comprehensive list of Petersen’s 850 works, as well as essays and poetry.

Pat Bliss, an ISU alumna who now lives in Sedona, Ariz., will include an essay about Petersen’s wife, Charlotte. Bliss also wrote for the first book about Petersen published in 1986.

“Charlotte would read poetry out loud to her husband,” Vaughan said, adding that Petersen then would incorporate that poetry in his works. “Charlotte was his muse, his inspiration.”

Other writers featured include Charles Eldredge, a former director of the National Museum of Art in Washington, D.C., and Lea Rosson DeLong, art historian and research curator at the Art Center in Des Moines.

In Rosson DeLong’s essay, she includes facts about Petersen’s early career before he came to the Midwest and how he came to produce his work.

“I describe his work stylistically and as an object,” Rosson DeLong said. She also relates him to other artists of the 1930s in her essay.