Public artwork is on the move with the Nicollet Mall's rehabilitation project in Minneapolis, with decisions yet to be made about where it will be relocated once renovations are complete for the city's signature downtown street.
For one work, George Morrison's 1992 granite pavement sculpture "Tableau," the next location will be its third new site on the mall.
The work originally was installed at the IDS Center, but was moved in 2004 for repairs to an areaway underneath.
Now the piece has been mostly removed from its current site in front of the downtown library, and will be stored in the IDS basement. Mall artworks are expected to be reinstalled by summer of 2017, when the mall renovation is scheduled to be complete.
But the eight pieces won't necessarily go back where they've been, which could help their long-term survival. For example, water-filled fire trucks have parked atop "Tableau" while making emergency runs to the library.
Finding a new site for "Tableau" that's big enough, suitable and away from fire trucks will be complicated, said Mary Altman, the city's public arts administrator. But she said it will go back on the mall.
"It's probably one of most important artworks the city owns," Altman said.
A mall newsletter from the time of its installation said: "Morrison's work reflects his interpretation of nature, common in Native American art, in which rhythm presides as a central symbol around which are woven figurative fragments of plant and floral patterns, lightning, flight, humans, animals, snakes and birds."
The removal is being performed by Twin City Tile and Marble Co., which also handled the excavation of the work at IDS. Altman said the removal, which is complicated by the curved lines between the 14 different colors of the granite pieces comprising the work, is happening under the supervisor of an outdoor sculpture conservator.
She said the removal requires chiseling away of grout to get at mortar that is then ground away from the granite. Some of the same workers are doing that work as in the last move, she said.
The artwork removal also includes the tourist-attracting Mary Tyler Moore statute. The only artwork that won't be returned is the etched glass in various Minneapolis architectural styles that's in the mall's eight bus shelters. That's because new shelters are planned. A new use for the glass is being sought.
Three new pieces will be added to the mall, Altman said.
The main reason for removing the artwork is that the mall's revamp will involve a tearing up of space from building to building across the mall's breadth. The Morrison work also needs to move for utility work, she said.
Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438
Twitter: @brandtstrib
(Workers removed George Morrison's Tableau sculpture from in front of the downtown library. Staff photo by Lee Svitak Dean.)
