A new William Seward statue will be unveiled in Juneau, scars and all

By the time William Seward bought Alaska, he'd had two brushes with death, and the struggles were written all over his face.

First, Seward's jaw was broken in a carriage accident that threw him onto a cobblestone street. A little over a week later, he was repeatedly stabbed in the face by would-be assassin Lewis Powell on April 14, 1865, the same night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

Sibling sculptors David and Judith Rubin didn't shy away from reflecting Seward's battle scars in their new statue of the orchestrator of the 1867 Alaska purchase.

"Why make him look pretty the way he did when he was young, when he'd already been disfigured by the time he came to Alaska?" said Ketchikan-based artist David Rubin. "We don't have to have revisionist history. We can do it the way it was."

The statue, commissioned by the Seward Statue Committee to mark Alaska's sesquicentennial, will stand in the downtown Juneau courthouse plaza just across the street from the Capitol.

Sculpted with clay and cast in bronze, the dramatic, meticulously detailed sculpture does not make Seward look like a monster by any means. The jaw damage and extra texture added for his stabbing scars are subtly and exquisitely rendered.

"We're very happy about the statue and the community is thrilled," said Wayne Jensen, who co-chaired the Seward Statue Committee with Mary Becker. "It's a very thoughtful pose and very well done piece of public art."

Everyone is invited to welcome the statue at an unveiling ceremony on Monday at 3 p.m.

The event will feature a performance by the Juneau Community Marching Band. Special guests and speakers include three generations of  Seward's descendants, the Rubin family, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, Juneau Mayor Ken Koelsch, Rep. Don Young and Steve Haycox, professor emeritus of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Before being ferried to Juneau from Seattle, the statue took a tour by truck to the town of Florida, New York, Seward's birthplace; Auburn, New York, the location of the William Seward House Museum; and Lincoln and Seward, Nebraska.

The statue was created in the Rubin family home in Ardsley, New York, and at the nearby Pollich Tallix Fine Art Foundry, which also makes the Oscar statues distributed at the annual Academy Awards.

David Rubin was selected by the committee to make the statue and he enlisted the help of his sister. The two previously collaborated on "The Rock," a Ketchikan monument representing seven of the city's historical figures.

David said Judith is the detail expert, and she perfected most of the Seward sculpture's finer points. But David was responsible for supplying Seward's scar tissue and collapsed jaw.

"When it came to doing the disfigurement, Judith couldn't bring herself to do it," Rubin said. "She had spent so much time trying to make it look nice.

Rubin said Seward was humiliated and ashamed of the way he looked after the accident and stabbing. He knows of only two pictures that exist of Seward with the facial damage. Rubin said Tlingits saw Seward differently from how he saw himself.

"They saw (his injuries) as a great badge of honor," he said. "He faced death and survived."

Seward could have fared much worse on the night of his stabbing. The metal neck brace he was required to wear temporarily after the carriage accident is believed to have kept Powell from murdering him.

Vice President Andrew Johnson was also supposed to be assassinated on the same night, but the man assigned to kill him flaked out.

The Rubins partially based the Seward statue on a photo of him in Trenton Falls, New York.

"He had hosted a large group of people on a Sunday and finished up the day with a big group picture," David Rubin said. "He's standing with this really cool lean, and he's holding this exotic hat, which is in the sculpture."

The statue's sculpted cape is modeled on a black wool cape of Seward's on display at the Alaska State Museum.

Rubin recalled during the first meeting he had with the committee in Juneau, a windstorm was raging outside. The weather inspired an idea.

"The wind was blowing like crazy and another committee member said, 'You've got to have this cape flying in the wind,'" Rubin said.

The sculptors molded the cape accordingly, fashioning folds and making it appear like it's in motion.

While they aimed for authenticity in most aspects of the piece, the Rubins also exercised some creative license. The statue's Seward stands 6 feet tall, and is perched atop a 4-foot marble base.

The real Seward was shorter. Rubin said most historians recorded his height around 5 feet, 6 inches, and added that Seward's grandson told him directly that Seward was closer to 5 feet, 4 inches.

Rubin and Jensen said the extra stature makes the sculpture more visible and impressive from a distance. Jensen added the height is even more exaggerated in other Seward sculptures across the country, including the ones in Seattle and New York.

From the time the committee picked Rubin nearly three years ago, they had a feeling he would deliver something distinctive and stunning.

"We knew how capable he was, so we hired him," said co-chair Mary Becker, "… and the rest is history."