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Neuberger Museum of Art

backstory50: Welded!

The beautiful thing about art is that it communicates, in one way or another, with its setting–whether it be inside the white-cube gallery of a museum, or within a grassy patch of a bustling park. 

There is a symbiotic relationship that occurs especially with public art, as it inserts itself into spaces not normally designated for art with people not prepared to encounter art.

Mel Edwards The Museum currently has a dozen works on view across the Purchase College campus as part of our ongoing Outdoor Art exhibition. I’ve already written about the Henry Moore at the entrance to campus. Melvin Edwards’s Gate of Ogun—sited in various locations over the years, including the White House—now greets students, faculty, and visitors at the main entrance to the campus’ main plaza from the W1 parking lot.

Gate of Ogun debuted at the NEU in 1993 as part of Edwards’s retrospective exhibition and was on view again in 2000 as part of Welded! Sculpture of the Twentieth Century, one of the first exhibitions and accompanying catalogues to examine the art of welded sculpture. Here’s what curatorial assistant Rem Ribeiro had to say about Welded!, which is still one of our most asked about exhibitions:

Welded! is exemplary of many of the Museum’s values and ambitions regarding exhibitions and scholarship. This project sought – and succeeded – to explore the varied approaches possible through welding and its tangential processes, stemming from its use as a functional, infrastructural material. Modernism itself has been known for its reliance on an expanding world view, spatiotemporal relationships, and a mingling of aesthetic processes and concepts. Welded! captures this through the lens of welded sculpture specifically. Its featured artists were both feeding into and straying away from these social assumptions.  

Today’s 50th anniversary thank-you goes to the artists who work with contextually-rich materials and to our friends who have long supported the Museum’s investment in various forms of sculpture–traditional and avant-garde, American and international, indoor and outdoor.

Come to campus, see Gate of Ogun, and learn more about Welded! in The Making of a Museum: 50 Years anniversary exhibition.

Tracy Fitzpatrick
Director, Neuberger Museum of Art

P.S. Read more about Welded! in this July 30, 2000 article in The New York Times. 

Orange square with a white border and large numbers 50 with small letters neu overlapping the top of the 5 and the word Years beneath

Watch for a new backstory every Wednesday and follow us on social media as we share stories about the Museum’s history, our evolution to the present day, and look ahead to our exciting future. Stay up-to-date with the latest news and “NEU 50 Years” updates on our anniversary webpage.