Mark di Suvero Sculpture becomes New Campus Landmark

AUSTIN, Texas — Clock Knot, a monumental sculpture by renowned artist Mark di Suvero, will be dedicated on the northeast corner of Dean Keeton Street and Speedway on The University of Texas at Austin campus on Sept. 26.

The sculpture is part of Landmarks, the new public art program in the College of Fine Arts.

“The piece is a superb example of di Suvero’s work,” says Andrée Bober, founding director of Landmarks. “It will transform the landscape and become an icon for the university and for Austin.”

One of the most important American sculptors of the 20th and 21st centuries, di Suvero emerged in the context of abstract expressionism in the 1950s. Clock Knot exemplifies the iconic form of di Suvero’s sculptures. Combined with works by Anthony Caro and Tony Smith on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Clock Knot will significantly expand important representations of modern and contemporary sculpture on the campus.

The di Suvero installation corresponds to the opening of the exhibition Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York at the Blanton Museum of Art. Park Place was a cooperative gallery founded by 10 artists, including di Suvero. It was the first downtown gallery with a large ground-floor space and became the prototype for subsequent galleries in SoHo and Chelsea. Early examples of di Suvero’s works will be included in the Blanton exhibition.

“We are extremely fortunate to have this remarkable collaboration between the Landmarks program and the Blanton Museum,” says Art & Art History Professor Linda Dalrymple Henderson, guest curator of the Park Place exhibition. “Not only does the presence of a large di Suvero sculpture on campus exemplify the Park Place goal of making art accessible to the public, its placement adjacent to the Cockrell School of Engineering is highly appropriate. Di Suvero is deeply engaged with science and technology and he conceives of his works as fields of physical forces as he constructs his sculptures using a crane.”

The sculpture is on long-term loan from the artist and Spacetime C.C., di Suvero’s studio in Long Island City, courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery. The university intends to purchase the piece for its public art collection.

The artist is scheduled to attend a public dedication of his sculpture on Sept. 26 at the site of the installation (Dean Keeton Street and Speedway) at 1:30 p.m., and to participate in a roundtable discussion with other Park Place artists at 3:30 p.m. in the Avaya Auditorium (Rm 2.302) of the ACES Building as part of the Blanton’s programming for the Park Place exhibition.

Landmarks brings the finest works of public art to the main campus of the University of Texas at Austin in order to support the university as a leading research institution, to enhance its aesthetic character and to provide a source of civic pride and welfare.

Download the press release.