An old bronze bust of Robert Sproul, created by a sculptor with works displayed across the country, has found a new home at UC Riverside.

The sculpture of Sproul, the first president of the University of California, was installed in June at Sproul Hall in a small courtyard between two wings of the building. 

The bust was donated to UCR and had been in storage at the Facilities Services corporation yard for an unknown period of time. 

The Office of Planning, Development and Construction found the location to place the sculpture. Facilities Services then fabricated and installed a concrete base to mount the bust. 

The sculpture was created by Emil Seletz, a successful neurosurgeon who had a thriving hobby as a sculptor.

Seletz also created a bust of Sproul at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall in 1958, the same year Sproul stepped down as UC president, according to UC Regents board minutes. Those minutes indicate the bust might be replicated at other campuses when funding and opportunities allowed.

It’s not clear when Seletz created the bust donated to UCR as the two have some differences in appearance. The Berkeley version features Sproul wearing a suit, vest, and tie while the UCR version features him in a robe.

A 1958 profile in the Los Angeles Times notes that Seletz created 38 busts on display in public buildings, medical schools, and hospitals across the country. Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain were favorite subjects of his.

Seletz, who was born in 1907 and died in 1999, served as chief of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and a professor at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, according to a biography on the university’s website.

He wrote a book describing all his portrait busts titled “Portrait Sculpture,” where he refers to each as a “a biographical sketch of an individual, recorded for posterity. It must possess personality, true character, a suggestion of the sitter’s life, his aims, purpose, state of mind, scope of thinking, strength and weakness. His life story should be in his face.” 

The new sculpture has already begun to draw notice at UCR with some students starting a new tradition of rubbing the top of the head for luck during finals, said James Rowland, director of marketing and communication for the School of Education.