Hunt’s portfolio of over 160 public sculptures available for the first time on Public Art Archive’s free discovery platform.
The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation and Creative West’s (formerly WESTAF) Public Art Archive™ are pleased to announce a new partnership developed to inventory, document, and provide free online access to a comprehensive catalog of Richard Hunt’s extensive public art commissions throughout the United States. As the most prolific public sculptor in the United States, Hunt’s artistic legacy, seen in works installed across parks, universities, and a multitude of public spaces, is paramount to the history of public art in the U.S. BK Fulton, Chair of the Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation (a 501c3 non-profit organization to advance awareness of the artist) remarked: “The artist’s passing in December 2023, as well as his forthcoming prominent installations at the Obama Presidential Center and The Emmett and Mamie Till-Mobley House Museum, generated overwhelming public interest in Richard Hunt’s life and practice, making the creation of a digital destination to explore his work an important and timely pursuit.”
Richard Hunt’s growing archive of public artworks and information about the project is now viewable at https://explore.publicartarchive.org/richard-hunt. With each artwork added to the archive, a new site to visit and explore is added to an interactive map of Hunt’s works throughout the country. While the archive project is underway, both Foundation and Archive leaders hope to collaborate with organizations, artists, journalists, and scholars to gain insights and cultivate context-including articles, photographs, interviews, and other materials-to make the archive a robust and comprehensive resource for all audiences.
Richard Hunt’s public art practice expanded in the late 1960s, when he was inspired by the 1967 installation of the Chicago Picasso, a 50-foot-tall Cor-Ten steel sculpture in what is now Daley Plaza in Chicago. That same year, Hunt was commissioned by architect Walter Netsch to create a sculpture for the John J. Madden Mental Health Center in Maywood, Illinois, entitled Play (1969).
“Play, as I look back on it, began what has been a second career for me, that of a public sculptor,” Hunt would later reflect. Hunt continued to collaborate with architects, engineers, public agencies, private corporations, and communities to conceive of and produce soaring abstract sculptures of Cor-Ten steel, stainless steel, and bronze, often inspired by prominent historical references and figures. Hunt considered his public art contributions and how they enhance the public’s experience in that space, saying, “Public sculpture responds to the dynamics of a community, or of those in it, who have a use for sculpture. It is this aspect of use, of utility, that gives public sculpture its vital and lively place in the public mind.”
Just as Hunt aimed to make his artwork accessible to broader public communities through both form and placement, the Public Art Archive, a program sponsored by Creative West, is rooted in an analogous mission, with the cornerstone goal of creating opportunities for discovery and engagement with public art at whatever level of interest, knowledge or background one might begin exploring.
“The Public Art Archive is honored to partner with the Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation to bring the artist’s public works to new audiences on our platform. As a digital archive devoted to the mission of ‘making public art more public,’ we are thrilled to be the home for Richard Hunt’s public works; Hunt’s altruistic approach to art-making and sharing is the exemplar of public art’s core values of enhancing community and exploring our shared humanity,” noted Lori Goldstein and Alison Verplaetese, who manage the Public Art Archive on behalf of Creative West.
About Richard HuntAs an artist and prominent American sculptor, Richard Hunt considered artistic freedom the most important aspect of his career, “I am interested more than anything else in being a free person. To me, that means that I can make what I want to make, regardless of what anyone else thinks I should make.” At 35, he became the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Hunt held over 160 solo exhibitions and is represented in more than 100 public museums across the globe. Hunt made the largest contribution to public art in the United States, with more than 160 public sculpture commissions gracing prominent locations in 24 states and Washington, D.C. Hunt was a central figure in Civil Rights-era action and commemorated many African American icons. His body of work explores themes of the African diaspora, African and Western art, mythology, and Hunt’s own ancestry, especially in relation to growth, expansion, freedom, movement, and flight.
About The Richard Hunt Legacy FoundationThe Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation advances public awareness, education, and appreciation of the life and art of American sculptor Richard Hunt. The Foundation was incorporated in Illinois in 2023 to become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit at the direction of its founder, Richard Hunt. The foundation welcomes support from all who appreciate the incredible contributions of one of America’s most important sculptors. The Richard Hunt Legacy Foundation’s vision is to ensure that future generations fully appreciate the life and art of the American sculptor Richard Hunt by encouraging, inspiring, facilitating, educating, and supporting the public’s understanding of his work and his place in American and art history. In addition, the foundation aims to support the next generation of sculptors and artists.
About Public Art ArchiveThe Public Art Archive (PAA) is a free, continually growing database of completed public artworks throughout the U.S. and abroad. By uniting records from public art organizations and artists into one comprehensive resource, the PAA aims to provide universal access to the complex stories that characterize public artworks not as static objects, but as dynamic, interconnected keepers of history, context and meaning. The PAA’s mission “to make public art more public” has guided the program’s growth into one of the largest active databases of public art. Since its inception in 2010, public art organizations and artists have submitted informational text, images, and additional multimedia files describing completed public artworks for free.
About Creative WestEstablished in 1974 as a nonprofit U.S. Regional Arts Organization (USRAO), Creative West serves a broad and diverse region that stretches from the Arctic Coast to the Desert Southwest and from the Great Plains to the Pacific Islands. The organization offers direct, practical support to artists, culture bearers, state arts agencies, and creative organizations, aiming to work distributively in support of community-defined goals. Creative West’s direct-service work includes funding, programming, leadership development, research, advocacy, technology, and convening to move arts and cultural policy forward.
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