OMAHA, NE.- Large-scale works by two major contemporary American sculptors and a figurative bronze by preeminent French sculptor Auguste Rodin were positioned in locations across the Joslyn Art Museum campus this month.

Joslyn Art Museum’s One of the Burghers of Calais: Andrieu d’Andres, immortalized by Rodin (French, 1840–1917) and the generous gift of John and Carmen Gottschalk, G. Woodsen Howe, and Anda Howe (2002), moved from the Museum’s concert hall foyer to the southeast corner of the Peter Kiewit Foundation Sculpture Garden.

A recently conserved bright red aluminum sculpture by John Henry (American, born 1944), a gift of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (1991), will return to the Museum’s parking garden Monday, May 24 (installation continuing Tuesday, May 25). The piece was installed in 2008 and damaged during a powerful spring storm that year.

Finally, Moment by Albert Paley (American, born 1944), a long-term loan from Gerald Peters Gallery (Santa Fe, NM), will be installed on the southwest corner of Joslyn’s campus (on the Museum grounds near the intersection of 24th and Dodge Streets). The over-fourteen-foot steel sculpture is the inaugural work for Joslyn’s program of changing outdoor sculpture.

Auguste Rodin’s One of the Burghers of Calais: Andrieu d’Andres
(modeled 1898, cast 1987, bronze)
This figure is from Rodin’s monument commemorating the surrender of the besieged French city of Calais to English King Edward III in 1347. Andrieu d’Andres was among the six burghers (citizens) who offered themselves as hostages, likely to be killed, and his pose and gesture express anguish and desperation.

John Henry’s Untitled
(1981, painted aluminum)
John Henry’s monumental sculptures grace numerous international public and private collections and cities’ spaces. The artist is masterful at defining that point of equilibrium that suggests a defiance of gravity and makes his sculpture seem light and fluid. Composed often of thousands of pounds of metal, they yet appear to hang suspended in midair. While modest in size (25 feet tall), Joslyn’s piece embodies Henry’s remarkable sense of scale and balance.

Albert Paley’s Moment
(1981, painted aluminum)
Albert Paley is the first metal sculptor to receive the coveted Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Institute of Architects, the AIA’s highest award to a non-architect. He began his artistic career as a jeweler — one of the major goldsmiths of the studio art movement in America. Best known today for his large-scale sculpture, he has been heralded for his inventive approach to form development and metal technique. The site-specific metal assemblages Paley has created over the past three decades place him not only in the forefront of contemporary sculpture, but also in the vanguard of artists working in the new, genre-defying area that has been called “Archisculpture.” His inclusion in this group is due to his skill in merging boundaries between the two disciplines and his innovative experiments with environmental and formal considerations.