A celebrated sculpture by artist Sol LeWitt was removed from the facade of a Downtown federal building because it deteriorated and needs a complete rebuild, according to the U.S. General Services Administration.
But the fabrication work has not been approved or funded, a GSA spokesperson said. While the agency said it’s working with LeWitt’s estate on the sculpture’s conservation, the late artist’s wife said she hasn’t heard from the GSA about the artwork in “years.”
The 90-by-72-foot work, titled Lines in Four Directions, had been mounted on the west facade of the GSA-owned building at 10 W. Jackson Blvd.
The GSA said damage was discovered on the piece, and the work was placed in storage in March, when the agency began repairing the leaky wall that held the sculpture.
“The wall is undergoing repairs to address water infiltration,” a GSA spokesperson said. “The artwork was assessed by a fine art conservator. Due to the extent of the deterioration of the artwork, full fabrication was deemed necessary. … Any refabrication would be subject to GSA approval and funding.”
The GSA said the McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory has been picked to conserve the artwork. The Oberlin, Ohio, company handled the 2012 restoration of Flamingo, Alexander Calder’s vermillion-colored sculpture in the Loop’s Federal Plaza.
Reached by phone Wednesday, a representative of the company said he wasn’t allowed to comment.
The Sun-Times was the first to report on the famed piece’s removal.
Erected in 1985, Lines in Four Directions is a rectangular work fashioned in painted aluminum that faces a public plaza between six-story 10 W. Jackson and the Dirksen Federal Building.
The GSA bought the building and the sculpture in 2000.
Unveiled as a gift to the public, the work was funded by a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, plus donations raised by the NEA-funded Art in Public Places program.
But when the Lines in Four Directions was suddenly removed from its setting and a reference to the work was removed from the GSA’s website, concerns were raised about the sculpture’s whereabouts.
The work is among 26,000 pieces of art and artifacts owned by the GSA.
The GSA now says the decision to refabricate Lines in Four Directions “was approved by the LeWitt estate.”
But the late artist’s wife, Carol A. LeWitt, who was in town last week from Chester, Connecticut, to see the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection of her late husband’s work, said her daughter found correspondence between the GSA and the estate about conserving the sculpture, but it was from “years ago.”
She said the GSA hasn’t contacted the estate since the artwork’s removal, nor has it told her where it’s being stored or conserved.
“The idea that it was removed is terrifying because it’s a site-specific work,” LeWitt said. “It can only be on that site. It was made for that site. And if it belongs to the city of Chicago, I hope that it’s the Chicagoans who enjoy it.”
LeWitt said the GSA should contact her about the artwork.
“I own the intellectual copyright. So I have a vested interest,” she said. “One of the things that Sol did, which was unusual, is he kept the copyright to all of his work. He learned the importance of that as a graphic designer. So even when he sold something, the copyright never transferred. It was about being able to control.”