Event History
The sculpture consists of two independent bronze casts. The larger element is a towering, abstract, tree-like form; the smaller element is a house-like structure installed upside down on its "roof". These two parts rest on the brick paving of the plaza with no visible pedestals. Approximately one hundred feet apart, they establish a dialogue that stretches across the open space. Closest to the Museum's entrance is the larger piece, an abstract form that suggests a figure, at once tumbling and ascending. The artist has described this form as a metaphor for cycles of life, death, anguish, the overcoming of anguish, and the possibilities of a future.
Across the plaza, precariously tipped on the apex of its roof, is a "dislocated house", conceived by Shapiro as the subversion of the archetypal symbol of comfort, enclosure and continuity. The house form might also be viewed as a head, fallen from the huge figure. Relative to the size of the figure, the diminished scale of the almost toy-like house reinforces fragility. This was inspired in part by the dedication of the entire sculpture to the children who died in the Holocaust. The sculpture bears a plaque with the following lines written by a child in the Terezin ghetto: "Until, after a long time, I'd be well again./Then I'd like to live/And go back home again."
https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum/architecture-and-art/loss-and-regeneration-by-joel-shapiro.
