It’s a pretty good sign a piece of public art needs repair when geese are flying away with chunks of it in their beaks. Such is the case with Mark di Suvero’s The Calling, which has stood at the head of Wisconsin Avenue near the Milwaukee Art Museum for more than 40 years, predating Santiago Calatrava’s iconic Quadracci Pavilion.
Today, the 40-foot-tall, 17-ton steel I-beam sculpture – nicknamed “Sunburst” – needs life-sustaining preservation.
“If we left this sculpture as it is, within a few decades it would be gone,” says Stephanie Cashman, associate conservator of objects at the Milwaukee Art Museum. “The metal would be completely rusted out and we wouldn’t have this artwork anymore, we’d just have pictures of it.”
Milwaukee’s harsh winters are the main culprit for damaging the paint and causing rust, but skateboarders are guilty, too. They practice tricks on the beams, further grinding off the paint. Every 10 years or so, The Calling has gotten a fresh coat of its vibrant red-orange hue, with each new coat caked over the last.
“It’s gotten to the point where the paint is no longer sticking to itself and big flakes are coming off,” Cashman says.
This time is different. As part of a conservation project that began this month, old paint layers are being stripped from the sculpture and new, longer-lasting protective epoxy paint will coat the bare steel beams. “Ideally, we won’t have to touch this again for 20 to 30 years,” Cashman says. The shade of orange will also be getting an update. The paint will be a custom creation that will match the color di Suvero originally used for The Calling.
“It’s going to be very orange,” Cashman says.
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The Calling is the largest piece of art in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s collection and although it’s owned by the museum, there have been conversations with di Suvero’s studio regarding the project.
“We have a good relationship with the studio. We really capitalized on an opportunity to work with them and have a lot of transparency,” Cashman says. “They provided schematics that we didn’t have and pointed us in the right direction for the types of paints that have worked really well in the past.”
As part of the project, the Milwaukee Art Museum will be sending a sample of the color being used to paint The Calling to the Getty Center in Los Angeles.
“The Getty has an archive of all of di Suvero’s colors, so we will be sending one of our color samples there at the end of this project so that it’s part of the record,” Cashman said.
Although still structurally sound, The Calling has been showing signs of affliction.
“People engage with this piece, especially skateboarders who love to grind on it,” Cashman says. “That wears away the paint layer and exposes the metal to the elements and all the salt we spread on the streets in winter. This exacerbates the corrosion, and we just want to stop it before it becomes a bigger structural concern.”
It’s important to restore the sculpture to a more aesthetically pleasing state, Cashman says.
“It hasn’t looked good,” she said. “It’s really important as an institution to care for our collection and make sure it looks the way it was intended. The artist had a very particular vision. It’s really important that we are maintaining the artist’s intent and that’s always a very tricky thing to do.”
There will also be new pavers, lighting and an upgraded identification plaque. And to prevent pesky skateboarders from causing future damage, they’re using aggregate concrete around the sculpture that is still easy to walk on, but less smooth for wheels.
The museum hasn’t released a cost figure for the project, but it’s sizable, Cashman admits.
One of the last surviving Abstract Expressionist sculptors, di Suvero was a pioneer in the use of steel. His large-scale pieces dot urban landscapes and parks worldwide.
Jed Morse, chief curator of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas describes The Calling as one of di Suvero’s “quintessential public monuments.”
“It’s perfectly suited to the site,” he says.
The sculpture has “striking conversations” with the stunning winged sunscreen of the nearby Milwaukee Art Museum’s Quadracci Pavilion, designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava, which opened in 2001, Morse says.
The Calling remains a signature attraction in an area that has experienced significant commercial and residential development that has dramatically altered the Downtown skyline over the sculpture’s four decades of existence. The sculpture sits in the reflective glow of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance’s 32-story glass skyscraper, which opened in 2017 and is one of a multitude of newer nearby buildings.
“Di Suvero’s work has a way of living in urban environments,” Milwaukee Art Museum Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Margaret Andera says. “These are building materials, things that you are surrounded by in an urban environment.”
The scale of The Calling makes it inviting, she says.
“It’s a sculpture that you have to walk around to really understand,” Andera says. “I think a lot of people who have seen images of The Calling don’t understand how dimensional it is and how asymmetrical it is. And it looks different from different angles. Di Suvero really wants to interrupt your view in a way that puts the sculpture in a space that’s going to make you consider it. That’s what a lot of the best sculpture does.”
Ivana Mestrovic, director of Spacetime C.C., di Suvero’s studio in the New York City borough of Queens, says The Calling was part of a move by di Suvero and others to bring art to the public.
“Mark thought it was very important to move sculptures out of museums and put them where they are free and accessible to all,” Mestrovic says.
The Midwest has always been an important region to di Suvero, she adds.
“It’s a place where he has been supported very heavily throughout his career. The region is incredibly important to him in his evolution as an artist,” Mestrovic says.
Born in Shanghai to parents of Italian descent and raised in San Francisco, di Suvero, who Mestrovic says no longer grants interviews, remains an active artist as he approaches his 90th birthday.
He studied sculpture and philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley before moving to New York City. In 1960, while working a day laborer’s job, di Suvero suffered traumatic injuries – a broken back and leg – when his body was crushed between an elevator and its jamb. The injuries left him unable to walk.
After painstaking physical therapy over the course of several years, di Suvero learned to walk again with the use of braces and crutches. Confined to a wheelchair for a period after his accident, di Suvero began creating small sculptures and learned to use an electric arc welder. He later became skilled in the use of cranes, cherry pickers and other tools that he used to bend steel for sculptures, marking a move away from wood, a mainstay in his earlier work.
One of di Suvero’s earliest pieces created from steel, Poland, is installed on the lawn at the Lynden Sculpture Garden in River Hills. The sculpture is composed of juxtaposed steel elements, including rusted I-beams and a mast.
Another di Suvero sculpture, Lover, made of red-painted steel, is also part of the Lynden Sculpture Garden’s collection but has been temporarily removed from public display for conservation.
The Calling isn’t without its detractors and has been a periodic source of controversy, dating back to its conceptual phase. The abstract design turned off some, as did an anonymous private donation that covered the cost of the project, believed to be about $150,000.
After considerable debate, the Milwaukee Common Council approved public placement of The Calling in January 1982, with the sculpture formally dedicated in April that same year.
Nearly 20 years later, contentious debate would again surround The Calling when the Quadracci Pavilion opened. There are those who argue to this day that The Calling should be moved because they believe it obstructs the view of the Burke Brise Soleil, the Calatrava-designed retractable wings that are the signature attraction of the museum addition.
But The Calling remains anchored at its Downtown spot near a bluff overlooking the lakefront and adjacent to a bridge that leads to the Milwaukee Art Museum’s property and it’s highly unlikely that the sculpture will ever move from the spot it has occupied for so many years.
Calatrava himself has said he thinks The Calling is right where it belongs.
“Calatrava has always said ‘No way, don’t move it,’” Mestrovic says.
There’s been symbiosis between the artists and their projects, she adds.
“Mark loves architecture and he loves the (Calatrava) building,” Mestrovic says. “He thinks the building is spectacular. I think the two works are incredibly beautiful together, personally.”
The Calling is one of more than 100 large-scale I-beam construction pieces created by di Suvero that grace public plazas and sculpture parks around the world and his works have inspired many artists to follow in his footsteps, Morse says.
“Mark Di Survero has been a fixture in contemporary sculpture since the 1960s,” Morse says. “Because of that familiarity, we know his work well, but I also think we lost touch with exactly what the work means partly because it’s ubiquitous. His work, which was radical in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, established the vocabulary for a lot of the artists who have made careers out of making public works of art. What’s missing from the conversations, and what’s been essential to Mark’s work, is the sense that the works are oftentimes presented as kind of anodized, muscular, brawny construction but Mark really makes them as expressions of joy. So many of his works harken back to those kinds of inspiration. Poetry and music and love. They are exuberant expressions of those very core human experiences.”
Di Suvero received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center in 2000 and the Heinz Award for Arts and Humanities in 2005. In 2010, di Suvero was a recipient of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal, as well as the National Medal of the Arts. In 2013, di Suvero received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Sculpture.
Work on The Calling is expected to take about two months to complete.
“This is a monumental project and a giant team effort,” Cashman says. “The whole area is going to look completely different.”
