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1964 – present · the Word of Life mural on the Hesburgh Library
The fame: On the south face of the university's great library stands a mosaic of Christ the Teacher, 134 feet tall and 68 feet wide, made of more than six thousand pieces of stone from twenty-five countries — the Word of Life mural, Millard Sheets's work, installed in the spring of 1964 above the library that opened the previous September. The world does not call it by that name. From the seats of the stadium across the way, the figure's raised arms sit above the goalposts in the sightline of every northward kick, and the nickname the sightline produced — Touchdown Jesus — is the name the mural carries in the national vocabulary, in broadcast booths and guidebooks alike. It is a fame of pure juxtaposition: the library's own wall, renamed by the stadium's geometry.
The documented particulars: The mural was Ralph G. Phalin's gift; the panel counts of its composition differ in print (324 against 342, a conflict the Notre Dame history carries open); the stadium's 1996 expansion, which carried the bowl up on that side, covered the mural's lower part from some seats — so that the most famous view of it is now partly a view of where its feet used to be read. The building's substance, Sheets's commission and the renaming of the image for President Hesburgh in 1987 are the Notre Dame history's.
Cross-reference: University of Notre Dame (und-library) for the mural whole; the football history for the stadium whose sightline named it.
Sources
- The Notre Dame history in this record — the mural's dimensions, materials, gift, installation in the spring of 1964, the 1996 expansion's coverage of its lower part, and the panel-count conflict.
- Atlas Obscura — "Touchdown Jesus, Notre Dame."