Gregory Paul Harm

Gregory Paul Harm was born (1953-) and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, pounded spikes on the railroad, drove a forklift in a factory from age 17-35, then went to college, and earned a BA in Poli. Sci., with minors in History and English. Harm served two internships in policy research for the Nebraska Legislative Research Office and for Governor Ben Nelson, studying environmental policy, and learning legal and policy research. Harm served the State of Texas as a Policy Analyst and paralegal for 23 years, having retired at the end of September 2017. Harm earned a Master's in Legal Studies and Legal Administration from Texas State University, while working days full time attending Texas State University at night.

In 2000, Harm noticed a connection between the artists of Rockefeller Center, Lee Lawrie and Hildreth Meiere, both of whom also created major works of art for the Nebraska State Capitol. Harm then wondered, how did a mostly agrarian state in the 1920s manage to land two of these, apparently world class artists, to create the magnificent sculpture and mosaics, in the middle of the Great Plains.

In the interim between then and now, he first created a website dedicated to Lawrie's life and monumental, and abundant architectural sculpture, on some of the nation's most dearly-loved buildings. In this quest to discover more about this long forgotten master, he has undergone photographic and research "expeditions" to New York City, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Gettysburg, Washington, D.C., Baton Rouge, Omaha, Lincoln, and the small village of Syracuse, Nebraska, Los Angeles and Pasadena, California.

Harm's research on Lawrie helped earn him an Admiralship in the Great Nebraska Navy, and in 2009 obtained a gubernatorial proclamation recognizing the 75th Anniversary of the completion of the 13 year long sculpture program at the Nebraska State Capitol.

Harm's research has contributed 26 additional examples of Lawrie's sculpture to the Smithsonian Institute's Catalog of American Paintings and Sculpture, increasing its total from approximately 75 works to more than one hundred.

in 2011, Harm created the 3rd Edition of this book, after previously self-publishing its initial soft and hardbound editions. The first two editions sold about 2-300 copies between 2007 and 2011.

Harm was invited to present the book to the Nebraska Library Association's 2011 Regional Gathering, and delivered a Keynote address in the Warner Chamber of the Capitol. For this gathering, Harm hired and enlisted the assistance of friends that performed the editing and layout tasks, located a printer willing to run a small batch of print books, and bought 250 print copies of this updated version.

These copies sold out within three years, leaving a void in historic literature about the Nebraska Capitol.

Harm expresses honor and gratitude to the 26 public and academic libraries that have added his book to their collections. These range from small cities and towns libraries, to prominent academic libraries, at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). (Harm suspects that these prestigious institutions apparently bought them, deliberately. In the absence of any national marketing or advertising, Harm remains puzzled on how these organizations heard of the work, much less bought it. He finds it "inexplicable.")

Responding to the demand for the book, Harm enlisted the professional editing and layout services, from Concierge Marketing, Inc. of Omaha, who then deconstructed the book to its essence, edited it, reordered its content, established a layout incorporating Art Deco design elements into it, as well as adding a comprehensive subject matter index.

Moreover, they incorporated a sundry of new chapters to the work, where Harm exhibited the fruits of his research conducted since the 3rd Edition was published. These document additional, obscure examples of Lawrie's sculpture from New York to California and many points in between.

The net result is that this new, richly illustrated non-fiction book has added more than a hundred pages of fresh content, and added more than 120 than were contained in the previous edition.

But the most important aspect of this book is that while it deals with a host of social, historic and cultural issues, it is written as an accessible book, suitable for anyone from 10 to 100, not written so steeped in academic or professional jargon, as to exclude anyone. It invites people and tourists from all over to come to Lincoln, and behold this most special among American buildings.