Bicentennial Dawn

Year1976

Classification sculpture

Medium painted wood

Dimensions15 x 90 x 30 ft. (457.2 x 2743.1 x 914.4 cm)

Credits Commissioned through the Art in Architecture Program
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration

Louise Nevelson’s Bicentennial Dawn consists of three groups of white, complexly patterned wooden columns rising like totems from the main floor of the James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse in Philadelphia. The edges of the columns undulate and visually reach out to the viewer. Additional sculptural pieces that jut out from the ceiling add drama to the installation. These abstract sculptures serve, in the words of Martin Friedman, then director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, as “phantom architecture, alluding to no single time or place.” Instead, their noble spires seem to herald optimism for the future, as the title of the artwork suggests.