TITLE: The South Tower
ARTIST: Don Gummer
DATE: 1998
MATERIALS: Stainless Steel
DIMENSIONS: 10′ x 2′ x 3′
TYPE: sculpture
On his way to his New York studio one autumn morning in 2001, Indiana-raised Don Gummer saw the South Tower of the World Trade Center fall during the 9/11 terror attacks. “It’s seared into my memory,” he said.
The South Tower (2008), Gummer’s 10 foot tall aluminum sculpture memorializing that moment, is an example of how art can be used to work through a trauma that is both personal and public. The leaning, quivering S-shape of the stainless steel that emerges from vertically-louvered design confers a sense of the inevitable in a moment that many of us never imagined was possible.
Gummer has won awards from the American Academy in Rome, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Tiffany Foundation. His works are generally large in scale, complex, and benefit from sustained experience over time. Together with his wife, the great actor Meryl Streep, Gummer is also an activist philanthropist. His sculpture, Open Eyes (2011), is also installed on campus.
To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_South_Tower_(sculpture),
which includes information created by Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI
Museum Studies faculty and students in 2009 as part of “A
Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”