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Category: 1980s

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Weather Tower by Jerald Jacquard

TITLE: Weather Tower
ARTIST: Jerald Jacquard
DATE: 1985
MATERIALS: painted steel
DIMENSIONS: 20′ x 7′ x 6′
TYPE: sculpture


Jerald Jacquard’s deep purple Weather Tower (1985) stands 18 feet tall, offering playful witness to the coming and going of the seasons. How amusing it would be to remain steadfast while the world changed around us, Jacquard may be suggesting.

Weather Tower was acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in 1999, where it stood at the front entrance until it moved to IUPUI’s campus in 2005.

Born in Lansing, Michigan in 1937, Jacquard established a sculpture department at the University of Illinois, Chicago and later was a professor of art at Indiana University for more than 25 years. He has been awarded several major awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Tower, 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.”

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Untitled (Faces) by Ellerbe Associates

Untitled (Faces) by Ellerbe Associates

TITLE: Untitled (Faces)
ARTIST: Ellerbe Associates
DATE: 1986
MATERIALS: wood, metal, stone
DIMENSIONS: 11′ x 2.5′ x 1′
TYPE: sculpture


Untitled (Faces) consists of an archway with lion faces, a low wall with alternating cherubs and lions, and a tree stump with a face, a sun, and a moon. Livening up the plaza, the work opens up the possibility for creative interaction with the building and leisurely play. How many faces can you count? In moments of stress and insecurity, sometimes the greatest gift art can give us is a brief respite—a welcome escape into a world of imagination and fantasy.

The plaza, designed as a place for patients and visitors to relax and eat, was created by Ellerbe Associates of Bloomington, Minnesota as part of the $56 million expansion on Riley Hospital for Children in 1986. The wall of the plaza was a part of this expansion, with Ellerbe incorporating red brick into the design to commemorate Riley Hospital for Children’s first building.

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Untitled (Chimney) by Ellerbe Associates

Untitled (Chimney) by Ellerbe Associates

TITLE: Untitled (Chimney)
ARTIST: Ellerbe Associates
DATE: 1986
MATERIALS: brick, concrete, stone
DIMENSIONS: 25′ x 11′
TYPE: sculpture


Untitled (Chimney) (1986), by Minnesota design firm Ellerbe Associates, introduces a key element of the home—with all its connotations of warmth and security provided by the hearth—into the sometimes cold and insecure setting of a hospital. The four limestone arches and corresponding columns support the red brick column that widens as it rises to some 25 feet. As a pavilion, it invites us to occupy space inside the hearth.

Untitled (Chimney) was part of a Riley Hospital for Children construction project completed in 1987 intended to create nourishing and supportive spaces for families.

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimney_(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.”

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Punctuation Spire by William Crutchfield

Punctuation Spire by William Crutchfield

TITLE: Punctuation Spire
ARTIST: William Crutchfield
DATE: 1981
MATERIALS: Wood, steel, aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 28h x 4w feet, 6 feet diameter, 3000 lbs.
TYPE: sculpture


The towering, playful Punctuation Spire (1981) makes full use of the airy space of the Campus Center atrium. Artist William Richard Crutchfield (1932-2015) originally created the 28-foot sculpture for a shopping center in California. It is one in a series of towers that offer tribute to “the symbols of our modern written language.” (The others feature the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9, and the word “wish.”)

Like the monolithic obelisks of ancient times, Punctuation Spire demonstrates the power of art in place-making. Donated to the Herron School of Art and Design, it installed in the Campus Center in 2010.

Crutchfield was an internationally exhibited artist and Indianapolis native best known for his painting and printmaking. He received his B.F.A. from Herron in 1956.

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation_Spire_(Crutchfield), 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.”

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Peirce Geodetic Monument

Peirce Geodetic Monument

TITLE: Peirce Geodetic Monument
DATE: 1987
MATERIALS: black granite, bronze
DIMENSIONS: 3′ x 1.5′
TYPE: sculpture

Have you ever heard of Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced “purse”)? He was one of the most dynamic American thinkers of all time, making significant contributions to philosophy, logic, math, and science.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, together with the U.S. National Geodetic Survey, donated and installed this sculpture at IUPUI in honor of the university’s Peirce Edition Project, an ongoing effort to publish Peirce’s personal manuscripts. Apart from memorializing Pierce’s contribution to art and science, the monument marks the precise latitude, longitude, and altitude of its location.

In a world full of smart phones linked to satellites, how have our understandings of space and place changed? What does it mean that fewer and fewer scholars follow Pierce’s lead working in both the sciences and the humanities?

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peirce_Geodetic_Monument, 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.”

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Mega-Gem by John Francis Torreano

Mega-Gem by John Francis Torreano

TITLE: Mega-Gem
ARTIST: John Francis Torreano
DATE: 1989
MATERIALS: Welded aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 7′ x 11′ x 7′
TYPE: sculpture

Mega-Gem (1989) has a long history in Indianapolis. Owned by Newfields, but lent to IUPUI, this oversized gemstone featuring three dozen colored metal rosettes, was part of a series completed by John Francis Torreano that played with the idea of the preciousness of art. How do you feel in its presence?

As with precious stones, there is always the question of the value of art. What does playing with scale and composition, as Torreano has done here, achieve with regards to how we think about precious things?

If gems often appear as pure, sparkling adornments that signal wealth and status, is Mega-Gem a kind of jewelry for the body of the campus? And is it meant to do similar work? Torreano (born 1941) is an American artist from Michigan, a clinical professor of studio art at New York University in Abu Dhabi.

Torreano has observed that all art “exists somewhere between a totally abstract creation and a total reproduction of physical things in the world.” In this regard, he describes his own work as “real fake art.”

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-Gem, 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.”

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Jammin’ on the Avenue by John Spaulding

Jammin' on the Avenue by John Spaulding

TITLE: Jammin’ on the Avenue
ARTIST: John Spaulding
DATE: 1989
MATERIALS: Brass
DIMENSIONS: 9.6′ x 4′ x 4′
TYPE: sculpture

Indianapolis native John Spaulding created Jammin’ on the Avenue (1989) as a tribute to the jazz heritage of Indiana Avenue that flourished from the 1920s to the 1950s. Famous Jazz musicians JJ Johnson, Freddie Hubbard, and Slide Hampton all got their starts in the jazz clubs along Indiana Avenue.

Lockefield Gardens Apartments, located just behind Jammin’ on the Avenue, is a former government housing project and Spaulding’s birthplace. It was home to many African-American families seeking a better life. Sixteen of the original twenty-four units were leveled in the early 1980s to make way for new developments, similar to much of the Indiana Avenue district.

Consider how public art like Jammin’ on the Avenue can be a touchstone for collective memory or even act as a challenge to institutional narratives.

Spaulding was an internationally exhibited artist. You can see more of his work at the intersection of Indiana Avenue and West Street, where Untitled (Jazz Musicians) is located.

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jammin%27_on_the_Avenue , 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.”