Tilted Arc

Tilted Arc was a site-specific public sculpture by the American artist Richard Serra, installed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan from 1981 to 1989. It was commissioned in 1979 through the United States General Services Administration's Art-in-Architecture program, and it took the form of a solid, unfinished plate of rust-covered COR-TEN steel 120 feet long, 12 feet high and 2.5 inches thick, set at a slight tilt so that it bisected the plaza. Serra intended the viewer's movement through the space to change the perception of both the sculpture and its surroundings, and he held that removing it would destroy the work. Office workers nearby objected to it and signed petitions for its removal, and a public hearing in 1985 heard testimony from both defenders and opponents. After Serra's lawsuit failed in the federal courts, the sculpture was taken down in 1989 and has been kept in storage since, in keeping with the artist's wish that it never be shown anywhere else. The dispute may have contributed to the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act.