BIOGRAPHY OF JOSEPH BROWN

Joseph Brown
Lecturer with rank of Professor in Visual Arts, Emeritus
Princeton University

Joseph Brown, a sculptor of widely diversified abilities, taught at Princeton University for almost four decades. He saw nothing incongruous in his two apparently unrelated interests—sculpture and athletics. In the spring of 1962 he retired from the Department of Athletics and Physical Education after his 25 th season as Instructor of Boxing. He taught sculpture from 1939 until he retired from the faculty in 1977; he is Lecturer with rank of Professor in Visual Arts, Emeritus.

A native of the once rough-and-ready Grays Ferry Section of Philadelphia, Pa., Brown (born: March 20, 1909 ) first caught the public eye as a Temple University undergraduate. Entering Temple on a football scholarship in 1927, he concentrated his efforts on boxing and was captain of the team in 1929. He turned professional later that year and won nine straight bouts as a light heavyweight.

Although he had reached the “main-event class,” Brown decided that there “must be a better way to make a living.” He banked his ring earnings and continued his studies at Temple , graduating with a B.S. in education in 1931.

An opportunity to pick up a few dollars modeling struck the spark which led to his development as one of the country's best known sculptors. While posing for sculptor Walker Hancock and illustrator Douglas Duer, he tried a small sculpture himself. Hancock was so impressed that he sent Brown some materials and encouraged him to go ahead on his own.

Brown did exactly that. He turned out two boxing figures and a dancer, borrowed a book on casting and –without benefit of formal study—had all three pieces accepted for exhibit by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts annual exhibition.

His first sculptures caught the eye of the late R. Tait McKenzie, who invited him to work in his studio as his apprentice. For the next seven years (1931-1938) Brown served a different apprenticeship, evolving the techniques which have since won a number of national awards, including the National Academy of Design's Barnet Prize for Sculpture. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Brown has never divorced art from everyday experiences and athletes.

In 1937 he was named boxing instructor at Princeton until 1962, and in 1939 was appointed Resident Fellow in Sculpture under the then new Creative Arts Program. He conducted popular courses in the practice of sculpture until his retirement in 1977.

During World War II, Brown was a consultant to the Secretary of War and was a member of the Founding Faculty when the Army Ground and Service Forces established the Physical Trainers and Athletic Directors School at Lexington , Va. His ideas about the teaching of boxing influenced the Army to revamp its program of physical training in 1944.

In 1954 he presented a paper at the National Recreation Congress and exhibited models of “play Communities,” designated to re-establish play as “a preparation for the responsibilities of maturity.” Since then full-sized models have been installed in playgrounds in London, Tokyo, Philadelphia, the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute (now know as the North Princeton Development Center) and many other public playgrounds. An article by Brown, “Unpredictability—Margin for Inspiration” which appeared in Architectural Record , brought invitations for articles in the French magazine Arcitecture aujourd'hui , the Italian magazine Domus , and the Danish magazine Arkitektur .

In 1961 professor Brown went on a four-month State Department goodwill tour, under the auspices of the Department's American Specialist Branch. In Japan , Taiwan , Indonesia , Thailand and Burma, he conducted scores of boxing clinics, gave dozens of lectures on sculpture, and turned out 16 statuettes and four small busts, most of them depicting local athletic heroes from the areas he visited.

Professor Brown was authorized by the State Department to return to Asia the following year to deliver the bronzes of his statuettes, in person, in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Burma.

In 1967, Brown received the annual Distinguished Service Citation of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, a department of the National Education Association, in recognition of his “meritorious service as a n educational leader” and for his contributions to “programs of education for children, youth, and adults.

He was on of the consultants to the Children's Television Workshop during the planning of “ Sesame Street ” in 1969. In April 1980 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sports and Physical Education.

Of all Brown's sculptures, Princetonians perhaps know best the pair of bronze runners placed just inside the main entrance of the university's Dillion Gymnasium. These figures, symbolizing Princeton's continuing athletic traditions, were cast from the residue of trophies destroyed in a gymnasium fire in 1944. He also has executed the majority of Princeton 's permanent trophies in sports ranging from cross-country to swimming.

Frequently Brown turns to non-athletic subjects, such as a sensitive portrait of the poet Robert Frost, or a study of the eminent American economist Frank Fetter, of “St. Barnabas, “ a work commissioned by the St, Barnabas Church, Philadelphia, Pa.

Brown's other works include: A.A.U. Swimming Monument; Ivy League Soccer, fencing, wrestling and squash trophies; National Intercollegiate and Interscholastic Swimming Trophy; the design for the Chimpanzee Dwelling, Philadelphia Zoo; South American Swimming Federation Award; portrait busts of John O'Hara, John Steinbeck, William Carlos Williams, Norman Thomas, Odetta, Leadbelly, Archibald MacLeish, Robert Kiphuth, James Michener and John Curry. In 1965 he executed two heroic bronzes for the Athletic Center of Johns Hopkins University, and his 19-foot statue “gymnast” graces the terrace in front of McGonigle Hall at Temple University . He was commissioned in 1970 to do four 16-foot statues for Philadelphia 's Veterans Stadium.

He has presented one-man exhibitions at Expo-67, in Montreal ; the 29 th Olympiad in Mexico City ; and at many universities including Lehigh, Yale, Colgate and the University of Virginia . He has lectured or spoken at Swarthmore, Penn State , the Recreation Conference, Wisconsin State Conference, the New Jersey league of Municipalities, and the National Association of Mental Health. In 1956 he presented a series of 20 radio programs broadcast over the NBC network on the “Use and Misuse of Leisure.” In 1965 he delivered a paper, “The Dynamics of Group Interaction,” at the Annual Convention of the American Psychiatric Association.

Brown and former Gwyneth King were married in 1939 in Wayne , Pa. Mrs. Brown is widely known as a painter and her work is frequently exhibited in cities throughout the country.