Last fall, after my very first all-nighter of the semester, I found myself standing next to the five angels perched atop concrete columns outside Rosse Hall. At 5 a.m., I was struck by the fact that, throughout my full-year tenure as a student on campus, I had never once stopped by the statues to appreciate their beauty and uncanniness. They are quite literally hidden in plain sight; if you don’t make an active effort to look up from your phone and pay attention to their playful performance, you wouldn’t even notice they are there, or that they are fully naked. 

The artist behind the sculpture is Carl Emil Milles, a Swedish sculptor known for his mythology-inspired pieces. Born Carl Emil Andersson in 1875, Milles began learning carpentry in his teenage years, and both worked and studied in Paris from 1897 to 1904 before moving to Michigan in 1931 to teach at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. While in the United States, he built numerous fountains and other sculptures, most notably The Wedding of the Waters in St. Louis and The Hand of God in Detroit.

According to a 2003 press release from the College, Five Angel Musicians was installed on campus in 2003 as a gift from Graham Gund ’63 H’81. It also stated that Gund “purchased [Five Angel Musicians] from [Milles’] estate specifically for the Kenyon campus.” The Gund’s collection page explains that the piece was supposed to “complement Storer Hall,” the very center of musical life at Kenyon. 

According to a September 2003 article, Spaid told the Collegian that the angels had been “in storage [at Kenyon] for a couple of years,” having been shipped in wooden crates from Sweden. He also claimed that they were intended to “blend in as well as to stand out.” Amy Bergen ’04, the author of the article, clearly did not fully agree, as the article described the sculpture as “one of the most prominent and unusual architectural features on campus.”

The Collegian published an article on the construction of the sculpture in November 2002, in which former Provost Gregory Spaid stated: “[The] five bronze angels are each playing a different instrument — a bassoon, a clarinet, a tuba, a flute and a pan-pipe.” The article also cited an interview with Milles by French sculptor Hans Hedberg, in which Milles said, “They are all boy-angels, playing music, all of them bringing joy and hope to people.” The construction of the sculpture elicited mixed reactions from community members, some more positive than others. Tamara Jones ’03 shared, in the aforementioned article, that she would take the angels “over [the Henry Moore sculpture] in the science quad any day.” On the other hand, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science and Biology Ray Heithaus ’68 expressed resentment toward the fact that a class-gifted large oak tree “‘almost as old as the College’ [was] to be removed from in front of Rosse” in favor of the sculpture.

Perhaps to the delight of those who were against the idea, the construction process was not without its hiccups. According to a February 2003 Collegian article, “inclement weather [resulted] in a temporary delay” of the project, though it would soon resume in April of the same year. Still, by the summer of 2003, the angels were fully erected.

Interestingly enough, Five Angel Musicians is a near one-to-one replica of Angel Musicians, an ensemble of (take a wild guess) five naked boy-angels playing instruments. Angel Musicians is currently on display in the Lower Terrace area of Millesgården, a museum in Stockholm that is home to over 140 of Milles’ works. An Association for Public Art article states that three additional angels can be found along Kelly Drive in Philadelphia as well. According to the article, Philadelphia’s angels, called Playing Angels, are identical to  the “originals” at Millesgården. 

The article also mentions that Playing Angels was initially envisioned to be a quintet piece for a private site in Philadelphia — but following the dissolution of the project due to an unspecified reason, one ended up in Kansas City to be part of the William Volkner Memorial Fountain, and a second angel flew to Falls Church, Virginia, to join the Fountain of Faith. The remaining three were incorporated into the original Angel Musicians collection at Millesgården, thus allowing for their casts to be bought and brought over to Philadelphia. Milles’ angels are also represented at several other locations around the globe. As they take flight by Middle Path, lounge at Missouri Botanical Garden and enjoy the cold water of the Fountain of Faith, many visitors cross paths with the jovial, cherubian musicians, but only few pause long enough to appreciate their performance. For the past two decades, they have continued to cast their watchful eyes upon us. Perhaps it is time to return their playful gaze.