Henry Moore’s sculpture arrived in the postwar American city at a moment of crisis, experimentation, and contradiction, when the utopian ideal of modernist urbanism enabled a corporate claim to space. Steel and glass towers surrounded by plazas proliferated in the 1950s and ’60s, promising to introduce civic clarity and order. Yet the new architecture was increasingly seen by critics and theorists as inhuman and empty, devoid of life, social utility, and civic value. In New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and other cities, Moore’s first American patrons saw the potential of his work to alter the shape of urban space, invest it with meaning, and reorient the public. Join us for a discussion about how Moore’s abstract sculptures, grounded in nature, landscape, and body, could project an aspirational humanism into the vacant spaces of the modern city.
Christopher Ketcham, art historian
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Supported by the MFA Associates, MFA Senior Associates, and Weekend Guides in honor of Barbara Martin.