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Serra, Richard

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
1939–, American sculptor, b. San Francisco; grad. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1961), Yale (B.F.A., M.F.A., 1974). Many of his early works (1960s) are cast in rubber or lead. Later, using metals, concrete, fiberglass, and other materials, he created large-scale abstract sculptures that were usually intended for specific outdoor sites. His Tilted Arc (1981) achieved notoriety when nearby office workers demanded its removal from a site in lower Manhattan. Perceived as menacing, the elegant 120-ft (37-m) curving sheet of rusting steel was dismantled in 1989. In the ensuing years Serra's huge, curved, torqued, space-enclosing, and space-defining steel sculptures, best experienced not by simply looking at them, but by wandering through and around them, have become extremely popular and are widely thought to be among the most significant abstract sculptures of the late 20th and early 21st cent. His pieces are included in many major museum collections; an eight-part, more than…
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Full text Article Serra, Richard

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born Nov. 2, 1939, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. sculptor. He paid for his education at the University of California by working in steel factories. From 1961 he studied with Josef Albers at Yale University. He settled in New York City c. 1966 and began to experiment with new materials. In…
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Full text Article Serra, Richard

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
1939–, American sculptor, b. San Francisco; grad. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (B.A., 1961), Yale (B.F.A., M.F.A., 1974). Many of his early works (1960s) are cast in rubber or lead. Later, using metals, concrete, fiberglass, and other materials, he created large-scale abstract sculptures that…
| 228 words
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Full text Article Serra, Richard

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
US sculptor. A leading exponent of minimalism , he is noted for abstract works in metal, in particular huge curving steel plates set up out of doors, as in Sight-Point (1972; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and The Matter of Time (2005; Guggenheim Bilbao). Serra made innovative, splashed pieces of…
| 164 words
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Full text Article Serra, Richard

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1939- ♦ US sculptor Born in San Francisco, he studied art at Berkeley and Yale, and from 1964 to 1966 studied in Paris and Florence, before settling in New York. In the late 1960s he produced a series of films, and began manufacturing austere minimalist works from sheet steel, iron and lead, barely…
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Full text Article Yale Graduate School of Arts

From A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
(c. 1960) While liberal arts institutions at various levels tend to have continuous reputations, arts colleges go up and down, which to say that they have stronger years and weaker ones, often inexplicably. Consider that among those getting a graduate degree in the visual arts at Yale around 1960…
| 211 words
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Full text Article Spanish Americans

From Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
CENGAGE LEARNING, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED U.S. Census...
Spanish Americans are immigrants or descendants of people from Spain, a southwestern European nation occupying the greater part of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish mainland shares a border with Portugal to the west and France to the north. The Mediterranean Sea borders mainland Spain's southern…
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Full text Article Cross-Dressing in the West

From Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History
European and American scholarly discourse on cross-dressing from the late nineteenth century to contemporary times . Cross-dressing is characterized by a gender contemplation and expression not persistent in time or space. It implies presenting one's own body, and so one's own gender, depending on…
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Full text Article Public Art

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Photograph of workmen on the face of George...
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With God's help For my country-By valour and work
JAMES GEORGE ALEXANDER BANNERMAN CARNEGIE , 3rd Duke; b 23 Sept 1929; s his aunt as Duke of Fife 1959, and his father as 12th Earl of Southesk and 9th Baronet 1992; ed Gordonstoun, and RAC Cirencester; Nat Service, Scots Gds (Malayan Campaign) 1948–50; a Senior Liveryman of Clothworkers’ Co, and…
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Full text Article Italian Americans

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
Beaumarchais's "The Barber of Seville."...
Italian Americans at the turn of the twenty-first century are the descendants of the some six million immigrants who arrived in the United States over the course of a century-and-a-half (1850–2000). In 1990 almost fifteen million Americans declared their ancestry to be Italian, making this the fifth…
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