Lincoln Center Reclining Figure
Artist: Moore, Henry
With: Herman Noack Bildgiesseri, founder
Status: In Situ
Title: Lincoln Center Reclining Figure, aka Reclining Figure (Lincoln Center) (sculpture)
Dates: 1963-1965. Installed October 1965
Medium: Bronze
Dimensions: L. 30 ft. 214 x 337 in.
Inscription: Guss H. Naack Berlin Founder’s mark appears.
Description: An abstracted figure in two parts, installed in a reflecting pool. The surface is creased and rough like an elephant’s skin
Owner: Administered Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, General Services and Operations, New York, New York
Located Lincoln Center Plaza North, 1865 Broadway at 61st Street, New York, New York
Remarks: The British sculptor Henry Moore received the commission to create a sculpture for the reflecting pool at Lincoln Center in 1961, after his name was suggested by the architect Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Moore visited the site in 1962, and became interested in how the sculpture would be reflected in the water below. The sculpture was a gift of the Albert A. List Foundation. In 2007, the sculpture was removed from the original North plaza and reflecting pool designed by landscape architect Dan Kiley, but was reinstalled in the new plaza designed by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro. Moore said of the sculpture: “I have never seen a person or a piece of sculpture against architecture that I would say can be seen perfectly from every point of view. I just don’t know it. When dealing with an architectural situation, I attempt to consider certain things that can go wrong. There is a kind of right size for every such situation. I think that in the Lincoln Centre piece its size in relation to the four buildings all around it and to the plaza is just about right. This is the thing I tried to think about. I don’t work with architects except on these generalised problems like size. I don’t like doing commissions in the sense that I go and look at a site and then think of something. Once I have been asked to consider a certain place where one of my sculptures might possibly be places, I try to choose something suitable from what I’ve done or from what I’m about to do. But I don’t sit down and try to create something especially for it.”
References: Canaday, John, “Lincoln Center Pool Gets Huge Sculpture; Henry Moore to Supervise Installation,” New York Times, August 25, 1965, p. 41.
Gayle, Margot & Michele Cohen, “Guide to Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture,” New York: Prentice Hall, 1988, pg. 272.
Davies, Pete, “Henry Moore Returns to Revamped Lincoln Center,” Curbed, September 28, 2009, https://ny.curbed.com/2009/9/28/10532130/henry-moore-returns-to-a-revamped-lincoln-center.
Rose, Pauline, Henry Moore in America: Art, Business and the Special Relationship, London: I.B. Tauris, 2014.
Alice Correia, ‘Working Model for Reclining Figure (Lincoln Center) 1963–5, cast date unknown by Henry Moore OM, CH’, catalogue entry, November 2013, in Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Tate Research Publication, 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/henry-moore/henry-moore-om-ch-working-model-for-reclining-figure-lincoln-center-r1171994