Iron & Glass

View of the South side of the Library Park, 1919. Pratt Institute Archives Buildings Image Collection

Library Park, [Undated]. Pratt Institute Archives Buildings Image Collection

During the 1950s the landscape of the park and the campus transformed, in part due to a federal and city funded Urban Renewal Plan directed by New York City Planning Commissioner Robert Moses. Utilizing funds granted by Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, tenants were displaced, buildings were demolished, and new buildings were constructed– all under the auspices of what were called “Slum Clearance Plans.” The Pratt Institute Area: Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 spoke of Pratt Institute, stating, “This site, with its convenient location provides an excellent opportunity for redevelopment of an area now being encroached upon from the south by deteriorating and substandard neighborhoods and from the east by commercial and industrial infiltration.” This redevelopment was rationalized as serving the community, but in reality it served as a well-funded act of gentrification. It altered the landscape of the campus, at which point eleven of thirty-eight townhouses, originally built to house low-income workers, were demolished. Today the remainder of these townhouses stand at Steuben Street, Willoughby Avenue, and Emerson Place. Ornate wrought iron gates, which had been installed along the periphery of the park, were also removed. The formerly disparate parts of the campus were gradually unified, with a new fence installed along the perimeter and roads closed to traffic. 

View of North Hall under construction, 1957-1958. Pratt Institute Archives Buildings Image Collection

View of Dekalb Hall from the corner of Dekalb Avenue, circa 1970. Pratt Institute Archives Buildings Image Collection

View of the Pratt Institute Library north facade, 1963. Pratt Institute Archives Buildings Image Collection

The Sculpture Park

Throughout the ensuing decades and seasons, the landscape at Pratt continued to change; a grove of London plane trees, a favorite of Robert Moses, continued to grow taller each year. While the natural scenery evolved, another transformation occurred in the 1990s– thanks to the creation of a sculpture park. In 1998, David Weinrib, artist and professor at Pratt Institute, curated and installed the first series of sculptures on campus, working with his associates Harry Gordon, Matt Dawson, and Andrea Zaremba. A brochure from 1999, which provided a map for visitors, spoke to the power of sculpture as a tool for enriching students' memories, noting that the park would create “a fund from which they will draw during their creative lives. All the pieces were chosen to provoke thought and inspire artists, designers, and writers.” Since the 1990s, the exhibit has continued to grow and evolve, with the majority of the sculptures remaining on campus only for two or three years. Weinrib reflected on the creation of the park in his diary, writing, “Each surrounding landscape change influences the visual life of the sculpture and gives it many lives. Just as within a day, changing lights and atmosphere can have a very strong effect on the nature of the work... In my early morning walks in the completed park, I was conscious of all this and felt it was like a multipart symphony in the making. It was exhilarating.” 

Sculpture Park Brochure, [undated]. Pratt Institute Archives Records and Manuscripts

The Curator

David Weinrib was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 12, 1924. Studying at Brooklyn College and Alfred University, Weinrib worked across many mediums, including painting, sculpture, and ceramics. In the 1950s, Weinrib and partner Karen Karnes established a ceramics studio at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Founded in 1933, Black Mountain College was established in the midst of upheaval, war, and economic depression, alongside “the rise of Adolf Hitler, the closing of the Bauhaus school in Germany, and escalating persecution of artists and intellectuals in Europe.” Many notable intellectuals were enticed by the radical and avante-garde principles of Black Mountain College, including Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, Dorthea Rockburne, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Josef Albers (the school’s first art teacher).

Weinrib in the Pratt Institute Sculpture Park. Published in David Weinrib by David Weinrib and Shane Barnes. All rights reserved.

Following Weinrib’s art residency at Black Mountain College, he moved to Stony Point, New York, where he remained until 1959. It was during this point in his life that he began to transition from ceramics to sculpture, though many diverse mediums continued to inform his practice. From 1959-1968, Weinrib rented a loft in SoHo, at which point he started constructing sculptural pieces that cascaded down the ceiling and along the walls. He experimented with asymmetrical composition across various media, from metal to plastic. Frustrated by the limitations of acrylic paint colors, he mixed and created his own palette, utilizing resin to play with methods of light and translucency. He also collected paint strips from hardware stores, drawing inspiration from color names like wild ginger, polished brass, and purple phlox– piecing the names into a variety of short poems.

  
Left: Paint strip poems. Published in David Weinrib by David Weinrib and Shane Barnes. All rights reserved. Right: Weinrib in the garden outside of his Amagansett, New York studio, planning the installment of a tea house. Published in David Weinrib by David Weinrib and Shane Barnes. All rights reserved.

Receiving a grant from the Guggenheim, Weinrib moved to Kyoto, Japan, where he researched the use of acrylic materials within outdoor sculpture work. He continued to travel, and after returning from a trip to India, Weinrib moved into Intermedia Church in Garnerville, New York – an old church converted into a psychedelic commune. During this time he built a 40-foot, 2-ton sculpture in Spark Hill, New York. He simultaneously explored film, poetry, and theatre, intrigued by the expansive creativity that exists within all mediums. In 1984, Weinrib returned to New York City, living in a loft in Chelsea with his wife and fellow artist, JoAnn Weinrib. It was during this time that he began incorporating wax into his sculptures. He also experimented with wood, bending thin sheets of wood into spiraling designs, in addition to designing an all-glass menorah. Weinrib continued to draw inspiration from various realms, including paper-mache, origami, pointillism, collage, the body, conch shells, laser cuts, water, and color. A professor at Pratt Institute, Weinrib taught sculpture, three-dimensional design, and ceramics. David was still sculpting up until a week before his death in 2016. The David Weinrib Memorial Exhibition was held in September of that same year, at The Rubelle and Norman Schafler Gallery. The exhibition announcement reflected on his life and his contributions to the arts, saying, “For the last 30 years, Weinrib taught Foundation classes at Pratt, and in 1999 founded the Sculpture Park, a project he curated for nearly 20 years that gained recognition as one of the 10 best college and university campus art presentations in the country by Public Art Review in 2006.”

Hans Van de Bovenkamp, courtyard between the Pratt Institute Library and Dekalb Hall. Sculpture Park Brochure, [undated]. Photographed by Bob Handelman, 2007. Pratt Institute Archives Records and Manuscripts

A Reflection on the Passing of Time

The 2020 edition of the Prattler, The Transition Issue, contains a Letter to the Editor, written by then Editor-in-Chief Carly Tagen-Dye. Addressing the impact of the Covid pandemic, Tagen-Dye wrote, “I wish more than anything that you could be reading these words while holding a physical copy of this issue in your hands. I wish the staff and I had just finished running around campus, slipping papers onto tables in the Pi Shop and on benches in the sculpture park, watching while Thomas and the other Pratt cats used them as pillows for afternoon naps.” Times of hardship can bring into clarity the impressions and memories that we hold dear; it is clear that community, place, and the sharing of art are central values to Pratt students, regardless of the decade. When we recall our time at Pratt, the sculptures rise to the forefront of our memory. Artists, designers, and writers continue to draw inspiration from topography and place, and use these elements to transform public and private spaces; the massive inventory of sculptures that we have on campus offer a profound source of inspiration. As the seasons wax and wane, the sculptures shift and transform within the landscape, bringing to mind the sculptural symphony that Weinrib had once composed. Just this summer, as I walked across campus at dusk, I noticed fireflies dancing near George Sugarman’s bench. The beauty of the sculpture park, perhaps, is that it is accessible and free to all: families, students, community members– all those who walk through the entrance.

George Sugarman, Bench. Photographed by Peter Bellamy, ca. 1990s. Pratt Institute Archives Slides Collection