Fellowship of Mankind

Fellowship of Mankind was originally commissioned for the Emmanuel Celler Federal Building and Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York. The sculpture was located in the building's lobby and sited above the doorway leading to the courtrooms. This sculpture, which symbolizes the fellowship of man in the art of welcoming the immigrant to citizenship, was an appropriate theme for the building. The construction of the new Theodore Roosevelt Courthouse in 2006 required the artwork's relocation to the new dining room. Fellowship of Mankind is a fine example of Callery's distinctive style of interweaving, stick figures. It is said she "wove linear figures of acrobats and dancers, as slim as spaghetti and as flexible as India rubber, into openwork bronze and steel forms. A friend of Picasso, she was one of those who brought the good word of French modernism to America at the start of World War II."

Mary Callery (1903-1977) was an American artist known for her Modern and Abstract Expressionist sculpture. She was part of the New York School art movement of the 1940s, '50s and '60s. From 1930 to 1940 she worked in France and had a close friendship with Pablo Picasso. Mary Callery studied at the Art Students League of New York (1921-1925) with Edward McCarten and privately in Paris with Jacques Loutchansky. She taught at Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. Her work is included in many collections including The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Phillips Academy, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; CIT Corporation; The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan; The Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; New York University, New York, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York.