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The Newark Museum of Art will unveil a permanent addition to its facâde on Friday night, reflecting the nature and complexity of contemporary art, the evolution of the surrounding Harriet Tubman Square neighborhood, and the diversity of the state’s largest city.
Apollo (Diptych) is a pair of sculptures by contemporary artist Sanford Biggers that flank the historic 1926 entrance to the museum on Washington Street. The 3-foot marble sculptures — one black and one white — are of the head and shoulders of the Greek sun god Apollo wearing a mask with African motifs. Each head is mounted on a double-stepped bronze pedestal, slightly turned away from the museum’s brass and glass double doors in a mirror image of one another.
The museum’s director and CEO, Linda Harrison, said she was “thrilled” to incorporate the recently-acquired sculptures into the collection of the state’s largest art museum, in a setting highly visible to patrons and the public alike.
“By placing them prominently at our entrance, we signal our commitment to community and ongoing efforts to make visible the layered and under-told stories of American art in all of its complexity,” Harrison stated in an announcement of the 6 p.m. unveiling outside the museum.
The museum entrance is opposite Harriet Tubman Square, the downtown Newark park highlighted by a monument to the famed abolitionist who escaped enslavement and pioneered the Underground Railroad. Last year, Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka renamed the former Washington Park to honor Tubman and better reflect the city’s increasingly diverse population, which was 48% African-American and 90% of color in 2022, according to Census figures.
For exhibits, events and other information on the independent, nonprofit museum founded in 1909, go to newarkmuseumart.org.
The work is part of Biggers’ Chimera series of sculptures, in which the 54-year-old Harlem-based artist juxtaposes Greco-Roman and African themes. In a review of the Chimera series on HomourInTheArts.com, critic Emma Sullivan described the “disruption to social convention at work in Biggers’ composites, which fuse two idioms normally kept well apart.”
“The mashups create a complex and tonally ambiguous effect – incongruous certainly, but not necessarily comic,” Sullivan wrote. “Biggers has spoken about his interest in artwork that has an ‘unfamiliar’ tone, arguing that ‘a great artwork can make you cringe’, and this cue offers one way into the work.”
Biggers, a native of Los Angeles who is African-American, said he was “deeply honored” to debut Apollo (Diptych) as a permanent installation in front of the museum.
“In Greek mythology, Apollo was revered as the god of truth and prophecy, poetry, music, and the arts — an embodiment of creativity and intellectual endeavors,” Biggers stated in the announcement. “I hope this symbolism, intertwined with the multifaceted themes of the Chimera series, sets the stage for Apollo (Diptych) to inspire thought and foster dialogue as it welcomes visitors to the museum.”
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Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com
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