Katharine Lane Weems

Her father was president of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,[2] and her grandfather was classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve.

She studied art at the Boston Museum School under Charles Grafly and George Demetrios, and also at the summer studios of Anna Hyatt Huntington.

However, she received support from two prominent female artists of the time: Huntington and Brenda Putnam, both of whom were working in New York.

It was decided that such a lavish facility should have art that would be equally striking, and Weems was chosen to carry out a number of projects.

[9] First, she made the carved bronze doors at the entrance to the labs, now the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, (MCB).

She combined realistic and Art Deco styles and relied on a large group of construction workers to carry out the project.

[Ambler, 31-33] The third part of the Biological Laboratories project proved to be the most popular: Bessie and Victoria, two rhinoceros sculptures made of bronze and weighing 3 tons each.