The Historic Monticello Post Office was constructed in 1937 in the art deco style of architecture with the historic context Arkansas Post Offices with Section Art as a U.S. Postal Service structure containing a sculpture financed through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Section on Fine Arts.
Monticello Postmaster, Guy Stephenson, requested in a letter dated November 3, 1939 to the Federal Building Administration Department of Fine Arts “consideration by your Bureau of having a “mural” painted on the walls of our new post office building...which the citizens of Monticello and Drew County take much pride and interest in”. This request was a departure from the normal process by which Section Art was acquired in the state. In virtually every other case, such art was written into the initial building specifications and the Section took the lead in seeing that murals or sculptures were placed in the structures. With the support of Representative W.F. Norrell, Arkansas’s Fourth District Congressman and Monticello native, the Section quickly discovered that $881 remained from the construction of the Monticello Post Office. The Section requested $750 be set aside to fundart for the building.
On December 6, 1939, the office of the Commissioner of Public Buildings notified Norrell that the $750 was authorized for “the decoration in question”. Inslee A. Hopper, consultant to Section Chief Ed Rowan, wrote New York artist Berta Margoulies on March 11, 1940, inviting her to submit designs for a sculpture for the Monticello building. Margoulies, a Polish-born sculptor, trained at the Academie Julian, Ecol des Beauz-Arts in Paris, accepted the commission a week later calling it “a nice surprise”.
In a September 14 letter accompanying her sketches of the proposed sculpture, Margoulies wrote that “since Monticello is known as the‘Tomato Capital of Arkansas’ and the community apparently takes great pride in its ranking industry, I have chosen tomato culture as the subject matter.” The three-panel sculpture was executed in terra cotta including a 4’3” wide by 2’4” high center panel and two flanking panels measuring 2’3” wide by 2’6” high.
A December 7, 1940, letter from the artist reveals some of the complications inherent in creating large, wall-mounted sculptures (each of the pieces in “Tomato Sculpture” weighs some 220 pounds). In submitting photographs of the central piece, Margoulies notes that the sculpture is cut in half, “necessary for firing such a large terra cotta.” However, the cut is located in an “overlapping of forms, and will not be noticeable at all when the reliefis fitted into the wall, both because the two parts will come closer together when placed and because retouching will be done if at all necessary.
Margoulies wrote Hopper from Monticello on December 24 that she was ready to install the sculpture. Postmaster Stephenson confirmed installation in a December 31 letter, noting that it took five days to hang the three-piece work and that he was “Pleased to state that so far as I can see or understand the project is completed in good condition and fully complieswith the photographic outlines and specifications.”
The sculpture, original vestibule and marble wainscoting, are maintained by the City of Monticello for the enjoyment of all.
