ART 50 2018: CHICAGO’S ARTISTS’ ARTISTS (EXCERPT)

With over a hundred public sculptures cast across the United States, Richard Hunt ranks among the world’s most prolific living sculptors. Inspired at a young age by the larger-than-life welded abstractions of Picasso and David Smith, Hunt went on to produce his own massive works, acquiring a disused power plant substation in the mid-1970s to facilitate his ambitious public commissions. His cloudlike “Swing Low” hangs from the ceiling of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, while “Spiral Odyssey” rises up from the ground of Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte, North Carolina. After a successful fundraising campaign undertaken by the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells to erect a monument in her honor, Hunt was tapped for the project, slated to coincide with the renaming of Congress Parkway after the African-American activist. Hunt has dedicated his life to cultural service, serving by presidential appointment on the board of the National Endowment for the Arts and on the Smithsonian Board of Directors.