We’ve all seen it: maybe we’re a little touch-starved or maybe the sun is hitting his sculpted bronze body at just the right angle, but there is no denying that the statue on the lawn outside of Lewisohn is definitely giving fuck-me eyes.
Commissioned by an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune in 1895, The Great God Pan was sculpted by American artist George Grey Barnard (shockingly unrelated to the Barnard Barnard). Upon seeing how irresistibly Barnard had sculpted Pan’s washboard abs, sultry dangling hooves, and, frankly, erotic method of playing his funky lil flute, the Singer Sewing Machine family decided that it would be selfish to keep such a smutty depiction of the DILF-y satyr away from the horny New York public of the 19th century and loaned the statue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Traveling on the Met’s dime, Barnard lugged his 4,300 pound hunk of bronze to be exhibited on the Champs-Elysées for six months so that the French could experience the raw, sexual fire behind his eyes and tuck him away in their spank banks. Completing his world tour, Pan was returned to New York where he was eventually installed on the Lewisohn lawn and where he remains, to this day, inadvertently getting GS students (and the Local Guide on Google Maps who gave him a 5/5 star rating and uploaded a close-up shot of his toned ass) all hot and heavy as they catch a glimpse of his rockin’ bod outside the window of their student lounge.
TL;DR: It’s because he did a semester abroad in France.
