On the occasion of a “Sculpture”–themed issue published in September 2022, the editors of Art in America asked four curators to consider different definitions of an art form that continues to evolve after thousands of years. Karen LemmeyCurator of sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC For a long time, sculpture was simply defined as an artwork that occupies three dimensions. On a basic ...
THE FIRST ARTWORK SPONSORED by the United States Bureau of Mines was realized in 1979 in the small unincorporated community of SeaTac, named for the nearby Seattle-Tacoma Airport in Washington State. According to a 1981 technical report for the U.S. Department of the Interior, “a depleted county gravel pit was rehabilitated by contracting an artist to turn it into a sculpture.” That artist, Robert ...
Artist Maurizio Cattelan has doubled down on his denial that his viral sculpture comprised of a banana duct-taped to a wall copied another artist’s work. In a new filing, his lawyers claim that Cattelan was unaware the other artwork even existed. The legal battle over the originality in Cattelan’s buzzy piece, Comedian, began after the Miami-based artist Joe Morford accused Cattelan of infringing the copyright of Morford’s own duct tape sculpture, Banana ...
GORDON HALL The thing I love about sculpture—which is also maddening and makes it difficult—is that it puts you into such a close relationship with physical stuff, with things and weight and messes. I can get to know the world through making objects, remaking them, learning the history or physical being of things. With my students, I talk about sculpture less as a category ...
A Canadian city has pulled a public art project over fears that a pair of towering bronze statues could be seen as an endorsement of colonialism – the exact opposite of the work’s intended meaning, according to the artist.The work, which cost C$375,000 (US$285,000), comprises two large bronze figures which were intended to stand on either end of a pedestrian bridge in Edmonton. On ...
How to define sculpture in 2022? This issue of Art in America offers considerable insight in answering that question, beginning with thoughts from curators we asked to weigh in. The Dia Art Foundation’s Alexis Lowry quotes sculptor Melvin Edwards: “My whole thing about sculpture is that it’s relative.” Julieta González from the Inhotim Museum in Brazil points out that “sculptures provide not only physical ...
Last weekend, an artist space in Utica, New York, was ransacked by a group of vandals, all of whom were between the ages of 8 and 11. The incident took place early in the morning of August 28 at Sculpture Space, a residency program for sculptors founded 44 years ago. After breaking into the facility, the vandals destroyed artworks, overturned furniture, shattered glass, and ...
In 2002, a gilded statue of Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost things, was stolen from a church in the Mexican city of Jiutepec. This week, the sculpture finally began its journey home after being found in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of San Angelo (SAMFA) in Texas. The artwork, dated to the 19th century, was handed off on Wednesday ...
In spite of the objections from a group overseeing cultural heritage in the U.K., plans to install a 12-foot-tall sculpture by Antony Gormley commemorating mathematician Alan Turing in Cambridge have been approved. Turing deciphered military codes used by German forces during World War II and was later persecuted by the British government under laws about homosexual acts. He died by suicide in 1954. The ...
British artist Daniel Lismore’s monumental pieces of “wearable art” featuring everything from rubbish to elaborate headgear studded with jewels took centre stage at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on Friday. Guests were invited to closely inspect the nearly 2-metre (6-foot, 4-inch) tall pieces, one of which was worn by Lismore, who calls himself “a living sculpture”. Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now ...
