"Large Arch" Library Plaza Bartholomew County Public Library  536 Fifth Street, Columbus IN  Sculptor: Henry Moore of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, England    "As a young sculptor I saw Stonehenge and ever since I've wanted to do work that could be walked through and around." Henry Moore

Henry Moore's sculpture, "Large Arch," which centers the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library plaza, was commissioned at the suggestion of I. M. Pei, architect of the library building. He wanted Henry Moore to design a sculpture that would serve as a focal point to control the space of the plaza between two architectural masses presented by the library and by Eliel Saarinen's First Christian Church with its towering campanile. "Large Arch" was given by Mr. and Mrs. J. Irwin Miller to Bartholomew County Public Library to create the plaza's center. Mr. Moore, considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, was 73 years old when he created this sculpture. The organic quality of "Large Arch" is a direct contrast to the geometric shapes of the nearby buildings. It reflects primitive simplicity and the power evident in onolithic sculpture of the past. It is 20 feet tall, 12 feet wide and weighs five and one-half tons. The patina has always been a rough green and has changed little over the years. It was designed in Mr. Moore's studio at his home in Much Hadham in England and sandcast in bronze in fifty sections at the Herman Noack foundry in West Berlin, Germany. The pieces, one-fourth to one-half inch thick, were welded with invisible seams. "Large Arch" was shipped to the United States in a single piece. The green patina is a natural aged look for bronze, if in a climate free of air impurities, and was created through a special process, directed personally by Mr. Moore at the foundry. "Large Arch" is an enlarged version of "Large Torso; Arch" which was sculpted 1962-1963. Seven castings were made of this small arch. One is housed at the Sculpture Court at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. One additional "Large Arch" was completed for Henry Moore's home, the Hoglands, in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, England.

"The best architects of my own generation began to think seriously about sculpture in relation to their buildings in the late thirties, and when they came around to it, some were persuaded not to have sculpture on a building, but outside it, in spatial relation to it. And the beauty of this idea of a spatial relationship is that the sculpture must have its own strong separate identity."              Henry Moore  Back to BCPL Architecture Page Back to BCPL Home Page