Skinner gift officially dedicated

By Ken Fine
News & Information

On a once-forgotten patio behind Meany Hall, sharp-edged blocks of bronze tumble through space. A round form - perhaps a sphere, or maybe a shield - breaks through a wall of metal timbers, a violent event frozen in time. Polished, patinaed bronze surfaces are mottled with shades of ochre and umber.

Artist Joe McDonnell stands in front of the sculpture "Breaking Away," which was dedicated Wednesday.

To students, staff and faculty, it’s a new intellectual and aesthetic touchstone. To mapmakers, it’s the latest landmark on the UW Seattle campus. To the skateboarders who populate Red Square, it’s another death-defying challenge. Two weeks ago, the UW added another important work to its collection of outdoor sculpture. And Wednesday, the work was dedicated with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception for its donor.

The new sculpture, titled Breaking Away, is a gift to the University from Kayla Skinner. Skinner, widow of David E. Skinner, has had a long involvement with the arts on the UW campus. She serves on the advisory board of the Henry Art Gallery, the premiere contemporary art museum on the UW campuses, and has been a major donor to the gallery.

Skinner commissioned Seattle artist Joseph McDonnell to create the more than two-and-a-half ton bronze sculpture. McDonnell has installed more than 150 outdoor sculptures at locations throughout the United States and abroad. He has a special connection to both Skinner and the UW.

“About five years ago, the trustees of the Henry Art Gallery were in New York, and my wife was, at that time, working at the Guggenheim museum,” McDonnell recalls. “They met with us, we had dinner, and I happened to be seated next to Mrs. Skinner. A very nice friendship resulted.”

Not long after, McDonnell’s wife was hired as Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Henry Art Gallery. The friendship between Skinner and McDonnell blossomed when he moved to Seattle from New York City. About a year and a half ago, Skinner purchased a one-fifth scale model of a sculpture McDonnell had designed in his Elliott Bay studio.

“I was really surprised when she asked me to enlarge it so she could give it to the University,” says McDonnell. Once it was approved for placement on campus, it took McDonnell and his assistants about six months to build the sculpture.

Breaking Away joins a small but significant collection of outdoor sculpture installed on UW Seattle’s central campus. South of McDonnell’s sculpture is another recent art installation, Martin Puryear’s Everything That Rises. Created in 1997, Puryear’s work towers over the courtyard of the Physics/Astronomy building. Breaking Away also stands a stone’s throw away from Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, arguably the UW’s most famous contemporary sculpture. Designed by modernist painter and sculptor Barnett Newman, Broken Obelisk improbably melds the classical forms of the obelisk and the pyramid in a dynamic, unexpected configuration. Critics suggest that Newman’s work subtly communicates the mission of the university, by thoughtfully reassembling traditional forms in an exciting new way.

With Breaking Away, McDonnell didn’t try to compete with the grand conceptual intrigues of Broken Obelisk. Rather, he jokes, it was inspired by his “early interest in Erector Sets and Lincoln Logs.”

“Mainly what the sculpture is about is form and shapes. It’s a visual experience. The message is secondary,” he explains. McDonnell says that much of his art, including Breaking Away, was inspired by the simple shapes and bold designs of the Russian “Constructivist” art movement of the early 20th century.

McDonnell admits that he may have encoded a few important messages to the campus community in his sculpture. “The theme is ‘breaking away’ - a theme I have explored for more than 20 years in my work.” he says. “‘Breaking away’ is what every parent hopes their kids will do when they go away to college.”

“Breaking Away is a charming work of modernist sculpture and adds depth to our small collection,” says UW Campus Art Administrator Kurt Kiefer. “Functionally, the sculpture will serve as a waymarker - that is, it will be an important guidepost on one of the most busy pedestrian corridors on campus. It further turns the plaza on which it is sited into a real place instead of a forgotten corner.”

Committees guide placement of sculptures on University campus

How does the University decide whether a work will be placed on campus, and where? Doesn’t every donor in the world want to offer us their favorite outdoor sculpture?

Well, not really, according to Campus Art Administrator Kurt Kiefer. “Anyone can offer art to the University. But a gift of some size - say, a very large painting that could only fit in a major public space, or an artwork that could only be sited outside - has a two-stage review before we can accept it,” he says. “The first review is by the Campus Art Committee, which is a subset of the UW Art Commission.”

The Campus Art Committee reviews the art, but not on the basis of aesthetics, Kiefer says. “It’s very difficult to make aesthetic judgments - they’re incredibly subjective. What we can say is whether a work of art makes sense within the context of the University, whether it has historical significance to the University, whether the University can maintain the work appropriately, whether the work is likely to offend.”

If a work of art is approved by the Campus Art Committee, and if it’s an outdoor sculpture, it goes to the campus landscape advisory committee. Kiefer works with the campus landscape architect to identify a range of possible sites for the work. In the case of Breaking Away, Kiefer says, the sculptor actually suggested a site.

The Campus Landscape Advisory Committee reviews the proposed sites for the work. “They review for appropriateness to the site,” Kiefer says. “They ask questions like ‘Can we maintain it?’; ‘Will lawnmowers bump into it?’; and ‘Will future construction interfere with it?’ If it passes both reviews, we accept the gift in full.”

Offers of outdoor sculpture to the University are actually very infrequent, according to Kiefer. He explains that right now there are competing interests: the Seattle Art Museum is building a sculpture park near Myrtle Edwards Park; the Bellevue Art Museum is interested in collecting works of sculpture; the Henry is interested in collecting works of sculpture; Western Washington University has a substantial collection of public art.

“Places that have a more established collection of outdoor sculpture tend to attract more gifts,” Kiefer says. “But we’re hoping to change that.”