…Brassy

The sculpture in place in 1968.

I am fascinated by the little things of history. You know those little parts of the neighborhood you might pass by a million times, but not know why they’re the way they are? The curve of a street or a building that looks pretty nondescript or a piece of forgotten public art? I love finding those traces of a forgotten past out in the world, but recently I came across a photo of a MOHAI-specific trace that no one seemed to have much knowledge about. So of course I attempted to find some information.

You may have noticed that the last few blog entries have been about our current location and building. I thought a small summer of nostalgia and thinking about where we’ve been would be nice before we jump head first into our new building and what we will become (though not literally. That would hurt.) As I was looking though photos in our collection of our building as it slowly got built (four sections over twenty years!) I noticed a few photos of a sculpture. A very grand sculpture. Like, huge! One photo placed it where we have the old fire bell now, in the grass area going down to our lower parking lot. I was certain it was no longer there because I look down that way every day and there is no possibility of missing that sculpture.

I asked many of the people who have been here awhile and no seemed to have much info other than that they vaguely remember it being here.

Since I didn’t have a name for the art or the artist, Google searches for “sculpture MOHAI Seattle” or “man serpent sculpture Seattle” turned up nothing useful (except that people love to take photos in the SAM Sculpture Garden. Good job, SAM!) Without that info, even our own database of artifacts wasn’t much help.  Luckily, I do have a Seattle Public Library card and that allows me to search the archives of the Seattle Times. I had a rough date range when it went up, since I knew when additions to the building were built; it wasn’t there when the third part went up in 1962, but it was there when the auditorium was built in the late 1960s.

The sculpture from the other side, showing its location in front of the auditorium wing being built.

That search turned up a nice little press-release photo-op that showed Mr. and Mrs. Allan Green Jr. donating the piece to the museum in 1963. The name of the piece was “Man of Space” by Armando Ortega Orozco. The piece was apparently shown in the Mexican Pavilion at the 1962s World’s Fair here in Seattle and was bought by the Greens soon after.  Eureka! So I plugged those into Google thinking I would get page after page of photos of my new favorite piece of mystery art. And… nothing. Searching just the artist’s name returned very little except a few pieces of his inMexico City and Naples, Florida. I couldn’t even find much info generally about the artist, except that he was born in 1940.

With the new information, though, our artifact database did tell me that we deaccessioned the sculpture in 1975. Unfortunately, the database only said that it was falling apart due to rust, but not where it went. Even the minutes of MOHAI’s board didn’t tell me the sculpture’s ultimate fate. If you have any information, please, let me know!