You can’t say Spartans don’t dream big. 

While an MFA student at UNCG, Alan LeQuire ’81 MFA learned sculpture bids would soon be accepted for a statue in Nashville’s Centennial Park. His mom mailed him the newspaper clipping from Tennessee, telling of the request for proposals. Not just any statue. One of Athena inside their full-scale recreation of the Parthenon.  

The 26-year-old put his proposal into writing. 

The idea: Intensively research how exactly the long-lost Athena statue had appeared in Athens’ Parthenon – and recreate it as closely as possible using traditional methods (no computer assistance). He would create a 42-foot-tall replica, meticulously replicating that of the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias. In the full-scale Parthenon in Nashville, she would stand on the same spot as she had in the ancient Greek Parthenon atop the Acropolis. 

Of all the submissions, his won.  

He was ready. He’d had an internship at a bronze foundry in Italy and, looking to return to America, he discovered only one art program in the Southeast offered a bronze-casting sculpture course – UNCG.  

He knew they had the very experienced foundryman John Springer, with a background at New York’s Modern Art Foundry. “I wanted to work with him primarily.”  

One other UNCG artist/professor particularly stood out: Peter Agostini.  

“Peter Agostini had an extensive background in the practical technique of working with plaster. He was exposed to a lot of really brilliant Italian craftsmen as a young man.” He would ultimately be the UNCG nominee for the UNC System O. Max Gardner Award.

Agostini, who also worked with clay, had helped to launch the Pop Art movement in the 1960s (together with artists like Andy Warhol) with plaster cast sculptures of beer cans, eggs, pillows, and balloons, the Encyclopedia of UNCG History notes. His clothesline sculpture and those depicting balloons were already well known, LeQuire says. “They were tour-de-force pieces, exhibiting his mastery of that material.” 

What else drew him to UNCG’s program? “They still drew and painted and sculpted from live models,” LeQuire explained. “I had studied the human figure – first of all with my father, who taught anatomy at the Vanderbilt medical school – and then later in France and Italy,” where he had drawing classes in front of a live modeI.  

He valued that traditional method. “I wanted to continue that practice.” 

Once he won the commission, he first researched for months before starting his sculpting. (The research would continue over the following years.)  

Meanwhile, the Park Board officials gave him a limit of nine tons. “I just I couldn’t guarantee that it would be less than nine tons, and so I went to a different method entirely, which involved sculpting it in clay first, section by section, and then making molds and casting it in gypsum cement, reinforced with fiberglass string. That allowed me to make very thin castings, less than an inch thick.” But that method took him five times as long as sculpting directly with plaster – it was slow going, he recalls. People likely began to doubt if he was ever going to produce anything, he adds. 

In 1985 he began revealing some parts of the massive statue. “I assembled the head and shoulders, and I put that on display in the Parthenon, just so people would know that Athena was coming.” 

Visitors at the Parthenon would see him assembling everything on a steel armature by 1987. He was only halfway through, though, he notes. “Once I had the body of the statue up there, there was another three years of sculpting – all the details of the arms, the helmet, the shield, the Nike in her right hand, all of that.”

In 1990, LeQuire’s Athena Parthenos was officially unveiled at the Nashville Parthenon. He completed his work on the statue, including gilding and painting, in 2002. 

It’s the largest indoor statue in the U.S. and meticulous research shows that it is just like the original statue, emulating key details such as the gold foil and the life-sized figure of Nike in Athena’s hand.

Other career highlights include: 

• Musica: Nine figures dancing in a circle, located in Nashville’s Music Row. At over 40 feet tall, it’s one of the largest bronze figure groups in the world. 
• Tennessee Woman Suffrage Memorial: Bronze portraits of suffragists Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Anne Dallas Dudley, and Lizzie Crozier French, in Knoxville’s Market Square. 
• Women’s Rights Movement Relief: Bronze relief at the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment. 
• Dream Forest: Featuring twelve-foot-tall forms blending tree trunks and human figures. 
• Tennessee Vietnam Veterans Memorial  
• Bronze doors of Nashville’s Main Library

This year marks the 35th year of his Athena. Two exhibitions have been assembled this summer in Nashville’s Parthenon and its gallery to celebrate his work and career (so far).  

• One closes soon. “Monumental Figures, a world-premiere exhibition of 24 new works, elevating female activists, doctors, musicians, and athletes who’ve inspired him, runs through September 21. 

• “Goddess in Progress,” an exploration of his Athena Parthenos’ development and construction, will be on display through April 19, 2026.  

• The UNCG Alumni Office presents a tour of LeQuire’s studio, where alumni will hear from this noted artist and get a behind-the-scenes look at his works. The event will be held September 4. Want to attend? RSVP here.