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Richard Serra, monumental steel sculptor and inspiration to many architects, has died at 85

2024-03-27T11:20:00-04:00

Richard Serra has died. The 85-year-old sculptor who made architecture more or less a permanent condition of his art was known for inventing a process for bending corten steel to create works he explained were about eliciting sensation and intended to display the unseen physical forces of nature.

More than any other contemporary artist (Sarah Sze, Robert Irwin, Richard Estes, etc.) whose work is informed by or makes as its subject architecture, Serra’s use of steel as a means of organizing space and sequencing experience within it is, arguably, the greatest primer for any learner embarking on academic studies in the field.

He began his experimentations first with rubber before advancing to cast lead and then finally steel, a material whose properties and building potential he understood innately thanks to time spent working in steel mills during his early years in California. The opportunity to study art at Yale University changed his life thereafter.

Serra's 'Bend' sculpture at the...

Thomas Phifer's Richard Serra sculpture pavilion at the Glenstone Museum debuts in new film

2023-04-05T11:35:00-04:00

Thomas Phifer's custom-designed building for Richard Serra's monumental 2017 Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure sculpture at Maryland's Glenstone Museum is the subject of a new documentary short from Rava Films.

Premiering at last month's Montreal International Festival of Films on Art, You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone charts the journey of the 656,000-pound sculpture from New Jersey to its new home at the 230-acre museum, where it was installed in July 2021.

According to the Glenstone, the film features previously unpublished reflections from the artist and the museum's Director and Co-Founder, Emily Rales, along with other key collaborators.

Still from "You Are The Subject: Richard Serra at Glenstone”. Image courtesy Glenstone Museum

The sculpture comprises four 82-ton forged steel segments which are now housed in a dedicated 4,000-square-foot pavilion that the architect designed in collaboration with Serra. This is now Serra's third site-specific piece at t...

Rendering unveiled for a new Richard Serra sculpture building at the Glenstone Museum in Maryland

2021-07-13T17:14:00-04:00

A Richard Serra sculpture is coming to the Glenstone Museum, and today it has a new home.

The 15-year-old private collection has announced plans for a new dedicated 4,000-square-foot space that will house a forthcoming installation by the artist on its 230-acre location in suburban Maryland next year.

Thomas Phifer and Partners worked with Serra on plans for the new building that updates the museum’s original intent to have its collection displayed in an elevated way via separate individual viewing spaces that serve as guideposts on a journey undertaken by visitors navigating a central trail. The paneled envelope of the structure looms out of the wilderness upon approach, precast concrete and landscape combine to give the impression of a rock formation or bunker to onlookers who enter the structure through a single centered doorway.

Courtesy of the Glenstone Museum

“Creating another building for Glenstone’s extraordinary landscape while working with Richard Serra, without question ...

Thomas Heatherwick named WSJ. Magazine’s 2015 Design Innovator

2015-11-10T15:12:00-05:00

“The thing about Thomas is that every project seems to come out of a completely different burst of imagination,” says media mogul Barry Diller [...] “Nothing looks similar—there’s no linkage. I think he’s the most creative, interesting architect—other than Frank Gehry, whom I adore—alive. They share a kind of genius for imagination in its purest form.”

The six other creatives that were – along with Heatherwick – awarded the title of WSJ. Magazine's 2015 Innovators of the Year are:

Richard Serra (Art)
Angelina Jolie Pitt (Entertainment/Film)
Karl Ove Knausgaard (Literature)
Miuccia Prada (Fashion)
Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Slack (Technology)
Mark Parker, CEO of Nike (Brand)

If you haven't yet, take a listen to our interview with Thomas Heatherwick from earlier this year. The interview starts at around 10:30...

Richard Serra engages with the Qatari desert landscape in his new sculptural piece

2015-04-30T18:51:00-04:00

Richard Serra’s new sculpture, 'East-West/West-East,' is a set of four standing steel plates rolled in Germany, shipped via Antwerp, and offloaded, trucked, and craned into place in the middle of the western Qatari desert...the steel is the same that he’s used in his other pieces, and it will oxidize in the same way, albeit more quickly in the hot, salty conditions of the Brouq Nature Reserve. The plates will [ultimately] turn a dark amber—approximately the same color...as the Seagram Building.

“Serra Gate” salutes to Taksim Square protests in Istanbul, will tour city next year

2014-11-24T18:37:00-05:00

Nodding to the Taksim Square political protests in May 2013, the Serra Gate installation by Istanbul practice GAD Architecture artistically interprets and also invites passers-by to examine the influence of urban interventions in the public realm. Serra Gate, which was inspired by the large-scale sculptures of artist Richard Serra, highlights how protesters created makeshift living spaces inside the park and the streets...

Learn more about the project on Bustler.

Richard Serra is the first artist to receive the President's Medal from the Architectural League of New York

2014-04-23T17:44:00-04:00

Known for his large-scale sheet-metal sculptures, Richard Serra will be the first artist to receive the President's Medal from the Architectural League of New York. As the highest honor from the League, the Medal is presented by the organization's president and Board of Directors to an individual in recognition of a significant body of work in architecture, design, urbanism, or art.

Serra will formally receive the medal on May 6 during a dinner at the Metropolitan Club in New York. Emily Rauh Pulitzer (early Serra patron and Founder and Chairman of The Pulitzer Foundation) as well as architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi (designers of Seattleʼs Olympic Sculpture Park that features the major Serra work Wake) will be present at the event to give brief remarks on Serra and his work.

Here's more detail from the Architectural League:

"In presenting this award, the League honors Richard Serra for contributions his work makes to the way we think about space, viewer and object, site, an...