‘Last Supper’ wax figures to be exhibitedSFlb

The remarkable replications have been in storage since 1997 at a church.

McClatchy Newspapers

FORT WORTH, Texas — Stunning life-size wax figures of Jesus and his apostles patterned after Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece “The Last Supper” have been in a warehouse for 11 years.

But backers of a new museum near the Fort Worth, Texas, arts district are close to bringing the figures out of hiding.

The 2,400-square-foot, white stucco Christian Arts Museum nearing completion at Hamilton and Bailey avenues will feature the figures and include other religious art.

For 41 years, the “Last Supper” exhibit drew viewers at various locations in Fort Worth. But it has been in storage since 1997.

“We hope to have it open by Christmas,” said Ed Malone, who has spearheaded the project through the Christian Arts Commission of Fort Worth. “All we need is $177,000 to finish the insides of the building and landscaping.

“We want this to be a Judeo-Christian art museum open to all faith groups at no charge.”

The lifelike figures are a three-dimensional depiction of da Vinci’s celebrated 15th-century fresco painted on the wall of the Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan, Italy. It shows the apostles looking surprised after Jesus tells them that one of them will betray him.

When making the figures, the artists planted thousands of strands of human hair one by one into the head of each. Great attention was given to the hands, eyes, beards and facial expressions.

The figures are the creation of famed Los Angeles wax artists Katherine Stubergh and her daughter, Katherine Marie Stubergh Keller, both deceased.

The younger Stubergh “was a master of wax figures, an artist of the first rank,” said Blake Kellogg, professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an amateur sculptor who studied under the Stuberghs.

The younger Stubergh trained as a dancer but found that her talents were in wax likenesses. “Mae West posed for her when Katherine was only 16,” Kellogg said. “The story goes that Mae West told her, ‘Kid, anybody can make a piece of mud look like me shouldn’t be no dancer.’”

I first saw Fort Worth’s “Last Supper” figures in a darkened building at the Ridglea Shopping Center in the late 1950s. I was overwhelmed. Before my eyes were Jesus, Peter, Matthew, Thomas and Judas the betrayer, the latter looking guilty and holding a moneybag.

Later, the artwork was at the short-lived Heritage Hall museum downtown. Most remember the display being at the Southern Baptist Radio & Television Commission on the West Freeway from 1977 to 1997.

When the exhibit was closed because of a budget crunch, many were left disappointed. Several unsuccessful attempts to resurrect it have been made. Malone said the latest effort has raised about $350,000 in donations from foundations, businesses and individuals.

Also, Fort Worth architect Ken Schaumburg donated his services, and contractor James Craig “saved us a lot of money,” Malone said. Central Christian Church, where Malone was formerly pastor, provided a site on its property.

“I think this will be great for Fort Worth and the arts district,” said Billie Parker, a museum supporter who has made donations in memory of her husband, Earle North Parker. “We want to make this not only an educational experience, but a spiritual experience.”

“The Last Supper” was brought here in 1956 by Fort Worth oilman-philanthropist William Fleming. He wanted to give it a permanent home in a building he helped finance at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It didn’t work out.

“Some Latin American pastors threw a fit,” Malone said. “They said putting the figures at the seminary would amount to worshiping idols.”

The late Paul Stevens, president of the Baptist radio-TV commission, then offered it a home. The wax figures are owned by the Walsh Foundation, established by the late F. Howard Walsh and his wife, Mary D. Walsh, who was Fleming’s daughter.

Henry Alvarez, a noted wax sculptor from Salem, Ore., who was an apprentice and co-artist with the Stuberghs, said some of Stubergh Keller’s best works are in the National Presidents Wax Museum in Keystone, S.D.

He said the Fort Worth wax figures were the second of five Last Supper interpretations created by the Stuberghs. The first was on display in Santa Cruz, Calif., for many years. Now it’s brought out only once a year, during Holy Week. Another is in a wax museum in Lourdes, France.

Sonya Vasquez of Arlington, Texas, a wax sculptor for Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and Louis Tussaud’s Palace of Wax in Grand Prairie, Texas, and other Ripley museums, is doing restoration work on the Fort Worth figures.

Malone, a former executive of the old Baptist radio-TV commission, began working on rescuing the Fort Worth art treasure when one of his congregants at Central Christian, the late Jane Sheets, “jumped all over me” when the commission closed the exhibit.

“She told me, ‘You need to get that out and get it in front of the public,’” he said.

XOnline: cacmuseum.org