South Dakota isn’t the first place people think of when discussing the masters of Italian sculpture, but one Sioux Falls couple set out to change that. 

Thomas L. Fawick was a local inventor, industrialist, and along with his wife Marie, a lover of art. As a show of this devotion the Fawicks hired a famous sculptor to go to Italy and work with the government there to make a bronze cast of two of Michelangelo’s most beloved pieces: David and Moses. After the bronze works were made, the civic-minded Fawicks donated them both to the city of Sioux Falls. Moses now sits proudly on the campus of Augustana University, while the always controversial David is now keeping naked watch over a public park.