Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s “Into the Unknown” ~ Brookgreen Gardens
By
“Into the Unknown” by H. A. MacNeil ( white marble, 1912) became the ‘seal’ image for the National Sculpture Society. (Photo by Dan Leininger, webmaster: HermonAtkinsMacNeil.com
Hermon A. MacNeil’s “Into the Unknown” at Brookgreen Gardens is framed by this ornamental iron gate designed by Anna Hyatt Vaughn Huntington, (who studied with MacNeil and Gutzon Borglum and other American sculptors). MacNeil portrayed ‘the sculptor’ as a female figure, sheltered under the sweep of her wings, with her face turned into the block, holding a chisel in one hand and a mallet in the other, carving herself out of the stone. 
Anna Hyatt Vaughn Huntington placed the piece by her early teacher in a cove of “honor” framed by an ornamental gate of her own design. The site conveys the angelic beauty of the white marble piece in a striking manner.
Brookgreen Gardens was built on the Brookgreen Plantation at Murrells Inlet, South Carolina in 1930 by Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington.
An Icon of this MacNeil sculpture remains the NSS symbol now over 100 years later
This 350 acre outdoor sculpture garden rests within a 9000 acre nature preserve. It provides a magnificent outdoor setting for an enduring ‘world premier’ of an American collection of 1200 unique sculpture pieces by over 400 sculptors. Coupling “Archibald Huntington’s interest in history and the classical world, with Anna Hyatt Huntington’s devotion to creatures and figures of the natural world,” this marvellous collection gathers a vast array of American figurative sculptures of nature, human figures, and animals. (Beatrice Gilman Proske, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture. SC: Brookgreen Gardens: 1968, p. 76).
MacNeil’s “Into the Unknown,” “symbolizing the mystery of artistic creation, was exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1912 under the title ‘Inspiration.’ 
A design based on it was adopted as an emblem of the National Sculpture Society at the time of their 1923 exhibition.
In 1948, a year after MacNeil’s death, the Huntingtons obtained the MacNeil piece for Brookgreen. Today Anna’s ‘Ornamental Gate’ frames her mentor’s tribute to the Inspiration of the sculptor. In May 2012, 100 years after MacNeil’s inspiration for this work, I had the privilege of visiting the Brookgreen Gardens and gathering this story and these images for the website collection. His ageless work has now entered the digital age in this virtual gallery in his name.
[Photo credits: Taken on site by Dan Leininger, webmaster: HermonAtkinsMacNeil.com]
