Since March, the Madison Square Park Conservancy has presented Antony Gormley's EVENT HORIZON, wherein thirty-one life-size sculptural self-portraits stand throughout the park and on the tops of local buildings, including the Flatiron and the New York Life Insurance Company. One of my groups couldn't get past the fact that "you can see the man's doo-dah."
That reminded me that this isn't the first time visitors to Madison Square have craned their necks to gaze upon a human figure floating above the park. New York City made national headlines in the 1890's when a sensational and scandalous nude by Augustus Saint Gaudens was unveiled as a weather vane for Stanford White's Madison Square Garden.
What was the name of that statue?
DIANA
(OR DIANA THE HUNTRESS)
(This version, at the Metropolitan, was cast in 1928 and is half the size of the one that stood atop Madison Square Garden for three decades before leaving the city for the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)
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