NEW ORLEANS—Artist Arlene Shechet joins Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by The Helis Foundation (PCSE) with the installation of her sculpture, Tall Feather. Traveling from New York to New Orleans, Tall Feather is among 13 other sculptures spotlighted along Poydras Street between Convention Center Boulevard and South Galvez Street. A collaboration between The Helis Foundation, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways, PCSE is the South’s leading outdoor, rotating public sculpture exhibition. Tall Feather will be installed on January 27 and can be viewed in the 600 block of Poydras Street between Camp Street and St. Charles Avenue across from the Pan American Life Center.
“Arlene Shechet’s work has been featured in art institutions all across the country, and we’re thrilled that we can bring her sculpture to New Orleans as part of Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition,” says Jessie Haynes, Managing Director of The Helis Foundation. “She is among a stellar group of renowned regional and international artists who have collectively showcased more than 35 sculptures downtown along Poydras.”
Tall Feather is made of glazed porcelain, white oak, cast concrete, and steel and towers at 10 feet high. Tall Feather debuted as part of Full Steam Ahead, Shechet’s site-specific installation in Madison Square Park, New York from 2018-19. Madison Square Park is a celebrated international cultural destination that has featured commissioned sculptural installations from distinguished artists for the last 17 years. Similar to PCSE, Madison Square Park is free to the public. Tall Feather was most recently installed at Art Omi, a prominent sculpture park in Ghent, New York. Shechet’s forthcoming projects include a solo exhibition of new work at Pace Gallery in Palo Alto, on view from March 12 – May 1, 2021.
“My favorite part of public art is catching the casual passerby unaware and without preconceived ideas about art. Being part of the busy Poydras Corridor accelerates that experience, and I am thrilled to be included in this joyful, generous effort. I love the city of New Orleans, and I am looking forward to becoming part of the landscape through my sculpture Tall Feather.” – Arlene Shechet, Artist
WHAT: Installation of Tall Feather, the newest sculpture of the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by The Helis Foundation
WHEN: Wednesday, January 27, 2021
Installation: 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Photos & interviews available:
William Andrews, Executive Director, Ogden Museum of Southern Art
Jessie Haynes, Managing Director, The Helis Foundation
WHERE: 600 block of Poydras Street between Camp Street & St. Charles Avenue, across from Pan American Life Center
“We strive to make art accessible to anyone who lives in or visits New Orleans,” says Haynes. “Poydras Corridor is just one example of the multitude of free, public art installations in the city for everyone to enjoy.”
About Arlene Shechet
Arlene Shechet (b. New York) is a multidisciplinary sculptor living and working in New York City and the Hudson Valley. A major, critically acclaimed survey of her work, All At Once, which the New York Times called “some of the most imaginative American sculpture of the past 20 years, and some of the most radically personal,” was on view at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2015 with an accompanying monograph. Since joining Pace Gallery in 2018, the artist has been featured in two solo exhibitions—Skirts (2020) in New York City and Together (2020) in East Hampton. Shechet’s work also includes historical museum installations. Porcelain, No Simple Matter: Arlene Shechet and the Arnhold Collection was on view at The Frick Collection, New York (2016); and From Here On Now at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., (2016). The artist’s ambitious large-scale public project, that included monumental porcelain and mixed-media sculptures, opened in September 2018 at Madison Square Park in New York.
Shechet was featured in PBS’s Art 21 (2014) as well as in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Artist Project (2016). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award (2004), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2010), and the 2016 CAA Artist Award for Distinguished Body of Work.
Shechet’s work is held in many distinguished public collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; CCS Bard Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; The Jewish Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
About Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by The Helis Foundation
Founded in 2013, Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition presented by The Helis Foundation is the South’s leading outdoor, rotating public sculpture exhibition. The exhibition spans Poydras Street between Convention Center Boulevard and South Galvez Street in downtown New Orleans and has featured over 35 sculptures by artists of local and international acclaim.
The Helis Foundation, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and The City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways works together to bring interesting and inspiring sculpture to the residents of and visitors to New Orleans.