Walt Lockley

Public Art at Rockefeller Center

New York City

Other Work, Good and Bad

Isamu Noguchi

The second-best piece in the complex, Noguchi's nine-ton stainless steel "News" on the Associated Press Building. Figurative and abstract, dynamic, physically unavoidable, and totally meaningful in the context of the building.

Paul Manship

"Prometheus" by Paul Manship, well-loved, well-placed, often ridiculed and endearingly goofy, and by some reports the fourth-most recognizable statue in the United States, which says something, I think, about the United States. Manship himself didn't like it. At least one source, an oral history with Inslee Hopper (arts figure in the FDR administration), credits Manship's assistant Henry Kreis with Prometheus.

Manship also did the two figures of youths now placed at the head of the steps, originally called People of the Earth, now called Mankind (to refer to both) and Youth (for the male) and Maiden (for the female), all this according to Christine Roussel.

Robert Garrison

Hildreth Meiere

Hildreth Meiere's three 18-foot enameled metal rondels Spirits of Song, Drama and Dance, executed by Oscar Bach.

And the recently re-executed Spirit of Radio and Television, below

Leo Lentelli

This is Leo Lentelli's Four Continents, situated on the spandrels opposite St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue and virtually unseeable.

From top to bottom, that's Africa represented by...an African, America represented by a buffalo head and ears of corn and a sort of Mayan head, Asia checking in as elephant head and Buddha, and Neptune representing Europe. According to Christine Roussel, Lentilli produced the plaster models and the studio of Attilio Piccirilli actually produced the work.

Gaston Lachaise

Four highly-placed limestone bas-reliefs for the Sixth Avenue façade of 1250 Avenue of the Americas by Gaston Lachaise, including "The Conquest of Space", "Genius Seizing the Light of the Sun", "The Spirit of Progress", and "Gifts of Earth to Mankind".....

.....along with two stone carvings for the International Building honoring construction workers.