I was braving the sunny campus of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, slipping through alleys and over walking bridges trying to find the shortest distance between my parking garage and the John C. Hodges Library. Because it had a centaur skeleton. Did I mention that?
I found it easily, on the first floor of the library, in the Jack E Reese Galleria, but only because I was looking for it. Otherwise, the simple, elegant archeological display was almost unnoticeable in the large, almost empty gallery. Let me rephrase that. A full-sized centaur skeleton was almost unnoticeable. Like it was a subtle joke placed by a wannabe Banksy.
Now we’re to the part of the article that I hate, where I have to start talking about it as the art installation it is instead of as the centaur skeleton it isn’t. The piece is called The Centaur Excavations at Volos and was created in 1980 by Bill Willers, a biology professor and artist at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He built it with the real bones of a Shetland pony and an old human skeleton from India that was hanging somewhere in the college’s biology department. He stained the bones with tea to give them an ancient appearance, and then created a mythology around it with the pottery. And, honestly, knowing that these are real bones helps mitigate my sentiment in the first sentence of this paragraph.
You don’t really need a moral behind a centaur skeleton, but the ones used for this bony art piece include teaching collegians the importance of skepticism and exploring the lines slashing through science, art, and history. It’s a lot like the Cardiff Giant, in a way, I guess. Except not as mean-spirited.
Coincidentally enough, the sports teams for the University of Tennessee are called the Volunteers, which is often shorted to Vols, which is only one letter away from Volos. That means that hopefully one day the university will retire their mascot Smokey the blue tick hound for a majestic centaur and really increase the value of their merchandise license. They can still keep it all orange and white.
Not surprisingly, this isn’t Willers only centaur skeleton. Right now, there is one on display at the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This one isn’t embedded in dirt, but stands fully erect…or fully L-shaped, I guess, and features the bones of a zebra and a human this time. Yes, it’s on my list.
As I left the campus, I didn’t feel so out of place anymore. I mean, I still didn’t make eye contact with any of the kids, but I definitely think I belong at any place with a centaur skeleton.