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View of the 15th St./Eisenhower Plaza entrance to the museum, with the sculpture by Joel Shapiro entitled "Loss and Regeneration" in the foreground.

Photograph | Photograph Number: N13126.02
View of the 15th St./Eisenhower Plaza entrance to the museum, with the sculpture by Joel Shapiro entitled "Loss and Regeneration" in the foreground.

View of the 15th St./Eisenhower Plaza entrance to the museum, with the sculpture by Joel Shapiro entitled "Loss and Regeneration" in the foreground.

Photographer
Timothy Hursley
Date
2006
Locale
Washington, DC United States
Photo Designation
BUILDING/ARCHITECTURE -- Exterior -- Art/Sculpture
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photo by Timothy Hursley

About This Photograph

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.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
 
Record last modified: 2013-01-22 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1162496