Times Square has risen to world attention as the Crossroads of The World and no event casts this in steel more than the installation of HOPE, a masterpiece by artist Robert Indiana, unveiled June 3 on 44th Street and Broadway in New York.
“I wanted to help name and empower the next generation,” Indiana said from his Maine studio, “and I felt that HOPE encompassed the needs of our time.”
The one-and-one-half-ton work, forged of stainless steel, is the artist’s long-awaited follow-up to his masterpiece LOVE, which resides in museums and high-profile public places throughout the world.
Indiana, now 80, was the subject of an important film by fellow artist Andy Warhol and is among the world’s most revered living artists. It is appropriate that an artist of his stature and a masterpiece of HOPE’s magnitude opens in what is among the world’s most cherished public places. A special HOPE dance, created by choreographer Teresa Smith, was performed at the unveiling with music by Loop 2-4-3 accompanied by the strings of the Vinca Quartet, some of the most talented classical crossover musicians from The New York Avant Garde.
“New York is the center of art and the center of world culture,” Smith said from her New York dance studio, “and Times Square is emblematic of the New Hope for the City—and the world for that matter. It’s a wonderful thing to bring HOPE in these times and bring people together with a positive spirit.”
