We’re tracing the story behind Kenneth Snelson’s Forest Devil and how the sculpture made its voyage from Mellon Square Park to the Portal Entry at the Carnegie Museum of Art. The tubular, metal sculpture was originally installed in Mellon Square in 1977 as part of the Sculpturescape exhibition for the Three Rivers Art Festival. Four artists were commissioned to create works that would achieve the Festival’s aim to bring significant outdoor monumental sculpture to Pittsburgh. Sculpturescape connected Pittsburgh industry, labor, students, and locally-produced materials directly with the artist for the community project.
In 2013, the City of Pittsburgh decided to restore Mellon Square to its original design, which would not include Forest Devil, and Carnegie Museum of Art was asked to help remove it. A team of outside experts and Carnegie Museum of Art staff helped reassemble and relocate the sculpture to the Portal Entry at the front of the museum.
In 2014, Kenneth Snelson visited the museum to discuss his sculptural practice of “tensegrity,” the blending of flexible and rigid components. Dan Byers, former Richard Armstrong Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, described Forest Devil as “in dialogue with the movement around it at the museum—cars circling it, people walking around it—and in some ways it takes on that energy and also holds its ground. It’s a still point in a moving world, and it’s that tension between stillness and movement inherent in the work that makes it so interesting in its new space.” Read more about the lecture on the Carnegie Magazine archives.
Be sure to look for the sculpture the next time you visit the museum!