From Here to There, 1975
Richard Hunt
Dr. Martin Luther King
Community Service Center
4311 South Cottage Grove Avenue
Commissioned by the City of Chicago, this composition
includes two 7-foot high welded bronze sculptures atop brick pedestals. Originally,
the works were placed approximately 30 feet apart, with one positioned under an
entrance overhang and the other in the open plaza, thus requiring viewers to
join them as a single work in their mind. Currently, the two sculptures are
separated completely, with one positioned on South Evans Street on the west
side of the building and the other on Cottage Grove, so that one must pass
through the enclosed lobby or walk around the building to encounter both
pieces.
Throughout his career, many of Hunt’s sculptures have
incorporated winged forms or shapes that suggest the possibility of flight.
These two pieces offer such aspects as well. While one calls to mind the
curvilinear shapes associated with birds, the other is more hard-edged and
geometric, evoking the mechanistic angles of an airplane. In 1998, Hunt
explained that his use of such forms was about “trying to achieve victory or
freedom internally,” as well as “investigating ideas of personal and collective
freedom.” These visual references to flight have resonances in the
African-American experience, representing freedom and transcendence. Hunt has
also contributed a powerful piece entitled I
Have Been To The Mountain (1977) to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in
Memphis, Tennessee.
The neighborhood that houses Hunt’s work in Chicago is
one that is still struggling economically and stands as a reminder that King’s
messages about racism and poverty in the United States still demand action. In
1959, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared Chicago the most racially
segregated city in the country. A Census Data survey conducted in 2012 by the
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research determined that Chicago remains the
most segregated city in the United States.
Other works:
Other works:
- Building Growing
- Eagle Columns
- Fox Box Hybrid
- Freeform
- Slabs of the Sunburnt West
- We Will
- Why
- Winged Form
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