Nancy Schön celebrates the debut of her Myrtle the Turtle sculpture in the Myrtle Street playground on Beacon Hill. She and Myrtle made headlines recently after complaints from parents forced Myrtle to move to a fenced-off area, disappointing its creator. Photo courtesy of Nancy Schön 

Fine Arts

Alum Nancy Schön Is 91, and Her Sculptures Are Still Making Headlines

Iconic Make Way for Ducklings and her newest piece in Boston hit the news this summer

When you’re 91 years old, as sculptor Nancy Schön is, and your artwork is still making headlines, it says as much about the artist as it does about the art. 

Schön (DGE’48), who studied at BU’s now defunct two-year Division of General Education just after World War II, and was a drum majorette in the marching band, says she has 10 pieces of public art throughout the Boston metropolitan area. But even though her sculptures are anything but controversial, two of them—Myrtle the Turtle and Make Way for Ducklings—got some sudden, and surprising, attention late in the summer, for very different reasons. 

Myrtle the Turtle, a four-foot-long bronze sea turtle, had been baking in the sun since its installation at Myrtle Street Playground on Beacon Hill in May, and some parents became concerned when their children came home with minor burns after playing on the sculpture on hot days. Some of Schön’s other sculptures include the Tortoise and the Hare and characters from Winnie the Pooh, so when she found out that children could not play on Myrtle, she thought it was ludicrous, and she hoped the sculpture would be a good opportunity to teach children a lesson about playing in the sun. But instead, the turtle was moved to a more protected and less accessible location in the playground to protect children.

“In the past…I have made sculptures that I want to be interactive. I want children to play with my work, to sit on my work. They play with the sculptures, sit on them, climb through them and on them,” Schön says. “That’s the signature of my public art. When we put Myrtle in, all of the above happened. Then several women came, said it was too hot, and it was moved.”

She and the concerned mothers had a meeting with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department over the placement of the sculpture, Schön says, and the ruling came back in late August that Myrtle would have to be moved behind a barrier.

“There could have been many solutions, like a simple canopy put over the sculpture, but these women wanted it moved,” she says. “It was agreed that the turtle would stay, but now it has a fence and beautiful flowers around it and people can look at it, but it’s in a fenced area so children can’t play on it.”

As someone who creates interactive art geared toward children, Schön was disappointed by the decision to move Myrtle the Turtle. “I feel sad about it because this wasn’t my intention, but I think we have to try to negotiate solutions,” she says. 

Schön is trying to look at the situation in a positive light: she compares Myrtle’s new position to that of a rare gem, because people can observe the sculpture, but not touch it.

But accepting the turtle’s new location doesn’t mean she wants it to stay there forever. “I hope in the future she’s moved back so kids can interact with her,” she says. “I think the parents who worry about these things should worry more about how to keep guns off streets and out of school areas.”

And in regard to safety concerns, Schön’s most famous work inspired another local artist to take action this summer. In early August, fellow BU alum Karyn Alzayer (CFA’09) surrounded the Make Way for Ducklings sculptures in the Boston Public Garden with wire cages and put mylar blankets over the ducks. Her goal? She wanted the bronze ducks to serve as a symbol of the ongoing crisis at the US southern border.

“I thought it was brilliant! Brilliant!,” Schön says. “I think it’s one of the most compelling political statements that someone could possibly make. It turns out that the best thing of all about the use of the ducks in the book: they were looking for a home, and these immigrant kids are looking for a home and put in cages with mylar blankets. I didn’t object to it for one second because of the tragedy happening to these kids at the border.” 

Alzayer put the mother duck in a separate cage to show how US Border Patrol separates children from their parents. Alzayer referred to the ducks as “Boston’s quintessential immigrant family,” because “they moved here for a better life” in Robert McCloskey’s 1942 Caldecott Medal–winning children’s book Make Way for Ducklings, in an interview with CBS.

“There was almost no other way that this statement about the horrors going on with children, thanks to our administration, and to separate children from their mothers, could be made,” Schön says. “It’s so outrageous I can’t even find words to express my anger at what’s going on.”

The well-known Boston sculptor looks back at her time at BU with fondness. As a marching band drum majorette, she met BU President Daniel Marsh (STH’08, Hon.’53) (think Marsh Chapel and Marsh Plaza) while she “strutted through the football field.”

Schön began at BU in 1946, right after the end of World War II; she felt a bit out of place among the older veterans returning from the war who were attending the University. She earned an associate’s degree, then a year later went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She says she still follows BU and is grateful for her time here.

Today, her community outreach goes beyond her art. She was involved in the effort to build a public skatepark when she learned that skateboarders—who had nowhere in the city to skate—were using her Copley Square Tortoise and Hare sculpture honoring Boston Marathon runners to do tricks. She thought that skaters jumping on her artwork was disrespectful, but was sad to learn that the skaters had nowhere else to go.

“Did you know I’m the skateboard granny?” Schön asks, referring to her nearly two-decade crusade to help give Boston’s skating community a home, as it took a while to secure the $3 million and 40,000 square feet needed to build the park in East Cambridge, which is operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. “Now older and younger kids have a place to legally go and get off the streets; it’s now an Olympic sport in Japan.”

With all her accomplishments, Schön is modest about her work.

“I guess I’ve made an impact, but I have no sense of it,” she says. “People come up and thank me and seem to identify me, so I have some sort of facial recognition. I hope I’ve made an impact.”