TAG 230

Gracehopper

Tagged Jan 7, 2024
Claimed Jan 7, 2024
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About this tag

No, that's not a typo. The official name of this artwork is Gracehoper, with one “p,” and the odd spelling comes from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Tony Smith’s enormous black-steel sculpture also plays with the shapes of grasshoppers and the coal and grain hoppers he remembered from the industrial landscape. Louisville’s version was fabricated in 1988 and dedicated the next year as a Humana Foundation gift. At 46 feet long and 23 feet high, it’s big enough to walk underneath and through, which was very much part of Smith’s idea.

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