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(From left) Janelle Link, Leilah Link and Kenneth Baker from Athens, Illinois, stop to look at the Torn Notebook sculpture at 12th and Q streets during a visit to Lincoln.
(Front to back) Dani Sheppard, Kaedence Louthan, Leah Hilkenann and Jack Bruckner take a look from inside the "Greenpoint" sculpture. Its curved, rusted steel walls contrast with the vertical Mueller Tower in the background.
Jazz in June attendees enjoy listening to live jazz while seated behind the "Fragment X-O" sculpture by artist Juan Hamilton in the Sheldon Sculpture Garden. From left directly behind the sculpture are Sophia Merritt, Mason Keim, Brandon Mohr and Jameson Mohr.
"SANDY: in Defined Space" (1967) by Richard McDermott Miller with "Arch Falls" (1980-1981) by Bryan Hunt in the background at left.
Start at 12th and Q streets, and take a look at “Torn Notebook,” the giant, writing-covered depiction in steel of a spiral notebook that’s been ripped in half, sending a couple of its pages flying into the breeze.
Then, leaving Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen’s slowly revealing 1992 masterpiece behind, walk a block north and look toward the Sheldon Museum of Art, where Jacques Lipchitz’s 1923-25 bronze “Bather,” a stellar example of his cubist sculpture, sits in front of the Philip Johnson-designed high modernist museum.
Keep walking north, take the diagonal left and you’ll encounter the massive red-painted steel beams of Mark di Suvero’s “Old Glory,” as you explore Lincoln’s internationally acclaimed outdoor “museum” of sculptures owned by Sheldon and placed across the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campuses.
“You’d be hard pressed to find a collection like this on any other college campus,” said Sheldon director and chief curator Wally Mason. “There are a few exceptions, but they’re primarily made of work that was commissioned. We don’t have work that was commissioned ... Ours is here because of a very smart man who acted at the right time."
That smart man is Sheldon director emeritus George Neubert, a sculptor himself who, during his 16 years at the museum – from 1983 to 1999 – acquired most of the outdoor displayed works, and nearly all of the monumental sculptures.
The latter includes “Old Glory,” which UNL students claim contains all the letters in the alphabet. As you move along the sidewalk and cross behind the Love Library complex, see Michael Heizer’s flat, 35-foot-wide concrete, steel and granite “Prismatic Flake Geometric” (1991). Be sure to look on its back side – a rough, uneven surface that contrasts with the smooth surface on the public-facing side.
Then heading northwest, look in the stand of trees for “Breach,” a 40-foot-tall stainless steel “tree” acquired by former director Jan Driesbach in 2004. One of a handful of such trees created by Roxy Paine, ”Breach” is, right now, pretty well hidden among the real trees that surround it.
“It’s best seen in the winter,” Mason said. “It’s the only time I like the leaves falling off the trees. It suddenly stands out and makes you think about the beauty of trees without leaves.”
The next stop, on a plaza in the campus center, is “Greenpoint,” Richard Serra’s 1988 cor-ten steel sculpture that is the most important piece in the collection. Perfectly sited so the angles of the space between its two curved, rusted steel walls contrasts with the vertical Mueller Tower, “Greenpoint” is the first of Serra’s cor-ten steel sculptures, leading into his “torqued ellipses” series, and is a classic example of the work of the late 20th century’s leading sculptor.
“It’s probably the most important on a whole lot of levels,” Mason said. “Despite the fact that I love the Gaston Lachaise, if I could back the truck up and take one thing, that’s the one I’d leave with.”
Keep heading west toward Richards Hall, and you’ll encounter Charles Ginnever’s 1985 “Shift,” another cor-ten steel piece, this one exploring space inside and out of its rectangle. Across the sidewalk is Fletcher Benton’s 1990 “Balanced/Unbalanced Wheels #2,” a brightly colored painted steel piece with a 35-foot-tall rod that stands up, bracing the wheels below that visitors often say looks like Tinkertoys made very large.
Turn south and enter the space between Sheldon, the Woods Art Building, Architecture Hall and Westbrook Music Building. That’s where Juan Hamilton’s 1991 cast bronze oval “Fragment X-O,” Tony Smith’s 1962 welded steel “Willy” and Richard McDermott Miller’s 1967 “SANDY: in Defined Space,” a bronze of a woman in a box that was purchased by students, stand out in the sculpture-filled grassy area.
Conspicuous by its absence is any sculpture on the plaza immediately behind the museum. Yinka Shonibare’s brightly colored “Wind Sculpture III” stood there of late. But that fiberglass piece cracked and began to fall apart, and had to be ground into small pieces – its steel internal structure cut apart because it could not survive outdoors here.
The Shonibare will not be recast and replaced. Rather, the insurance proceeds are being used to maintain and conserve the other sculptures, doing such things as waxing the bronzes and painting “Old Glory.”
”With the Nebraska weather, the sun, they don’t fare well here,” Mason said. “The cost to conserve these things is high, but you have to do it. Part of the issue for us is building a war chest for maintenance of the sculpture going forward. It’s expensive, but you have to do it.”
Also long missing from the outdoor collection is Elie Nadelman’s 1915 “Man in Open Air.” One of only three castings of the modernist masterpiece, “Man in Open Air” was nearly destroyed by vandals in the 1990s.
“They took one of our iconic works, ripped it off its base, and it was found a month later on the other campus,” Mason said. “They so damaged the bronze that we can’t place that piece anywhere, except for a short time, inside.”
Concerns about vandalism and the theft of sculptures on the open campus which, unlike private sculpture displays, is never closed and has unlimited access, have led to the unfortunate situation where the sunken Sculpture Garden on the south side of the Sheldon building is now empty.
And sculptures must be placed to prevent, as much as possible, vandalism and other destructive acts.
That will be the case when another of Sheldon’s iconic works, arguably the second most important behind Serra's "Greenpoint," goes up on the plaza behind the museum in September.
In the 2010s, David Smith’s 1960 “Superstructure on 4,” a geometric stainless steel abstraction of planes, lines and curves, was unfortunately removed from its decades-long site behind the museum in favor of a Jun Kaneko head. Instead, it was moved under trees, where it sustained damage from bird droppings and tree sap.
Now conserved and ready to return to the outdoors where it was intended by Smith to be displayed, “Superstructure on 4” has to be placed on a concrete base on the plaza – for a reason.
“When we put the David Smith back up, we have to site the sculpture and the concrete base to make it skateboard proof,” Mason said. “Skateboarders are our enemies.”
The final highlight is, appropriately, another classic – Lachaise’s “Floating Figure,” a casting of his 1927 depiction of an airborne woman who floats above the concrete base on the stairwell behind the museum.
That would conclude the walking tour of the 28 City Campus pieces. Four more are on UNL’s East Campus – a collection and display that only could have happened from the ‘80s to the early 2000s.
“It was an era,” Mason said. “It’s very hard to think about that era continuing today. You couldn’t afford to do this now. And it is very hard to get anything sited on a campus today. We have it now, and it is a treasure, a rare treasure.”
Reach the writer at 402-473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com. On Twitter @KentWolgamott
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L. Kent Wolgamott, the recipient of the 2018 Mayor’s Arts Award, has written about arts and entertainment for Lincoln newspapers since 1985, reviewing thousands of movies and concerts and hundreds of art exhibitions.
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(From left) Janelle Link, Leilah Link and Kenneth Baker from Athens, Illinois, stop to look at the Torn Notebook sculpture at 12th and Q streets during a visit to Lincoln.
(Front to back) Dani Sheppard, Kaedence Louthan, Leah Hilkenann and Jack Bruckner take a look from inside the "Greenpoint" sculpture. Its curved, rusted steel walls contrast with the vertical Mueller Tower in the background.
Jazz in June attendees enjoy listening to live jazz while seated behind the "Fragment X-O" sculpture by artist Juan Hamilton in the Sheldon Sculpture Garden. From left directly behind the sculpture are Sophia Merritt, Mason Keim, Brandon Mohr and Jameson Mohr.
"SANDY: in Defined Space" (1967) by Richard McDermott Miller with "Arch Falls" (1980-1981) by Bryan Hunt in the background at left.
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