Music and Geometry

A showpiece of outdoor sculpture: Going Around the Corner with X, created and donated by world-renowned artist Fletcher Benton.

A showpiece of outdoor sculpture: Going Around the Corner with X, created and donated by world-renowned artist Fletcher Benton. Its new permanent home is outside the de Saisset Museum.
Sculpture has never been about illusion the way a painting creates a virtual space. Rather, it inhabits an intimate spot between sight and touch, movement and stillness, melody and math. That’s perhaps why renowned Bay Area sculptor Fletcher Benton—whose work now graces the Mission Campus—has described his work in terms of music.

Benton’s Going Around the Corner with X arrived on campus in 2013 as part of the traveling exhibit Fletcher Benton: The Artist’s Studio. Donated by the artist with assistance from Paula Kirkeby in honor of William Rewak, S.J., the steel sculpture now has its permanent home in front of the de Saisset Museum—which this year celebrated its 60th anniversary. The sculpture also inaugurated an expanding outdoor sculpture collection for the museum.

Benton arranged geometrical forms to evoke a response the way music might at first hearing: “If you were to say, ‘I don’t know what I like about it, it just makes me feel good,’ you have said to me what I have tried to give you,” he says. In recognition of his innovative work, his risk-taking, and his educational contributions, Benton received an honorary degree from SCU in 2015.

More on the museum website: scu.edu/desaisset

post-image What goes around: Fletcher Benton's Going Around the Corner with X (which is stationary) came to campus in 2013 for a visit and is now here for good. Photo by Joanne Lee
A Reflection

On Monday, April 21, 2025, after news of Pope Francis’s death arrived at Santa Clara University, Dennis C. Smolarski, S.J. stood in the Mission Church and gave a homily for Mass. His words reflected on the miracle of Easter, hope, and the example Francis gave others to follow.

Back to Basics

Bridging classrooms and living rooms, the BBILY Project helps parents help kids with math.

The Accent Artist

Turn those hard American As into proper British “ahs” with the help of dialect coach Kristin Hill ’25

Moral Dilemmas on Wheels

Anthropologist Melissa Cefkin steers us through the ethical predicaments of self-driving cars.