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Architecture Photos Sculptures

Arrival

The Irish Government’s Office of Public Works commissioned a Famine Ship Sculpture, entitled “Arrival” by artist John Behan, which the Taoiseach was presented to the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Anan, in December 2000.

The bronze sculpture, measuring some 7 metres in length and 8 metres in height, is a variation on the National Famine Memorial at Murrisk, Co. Mayo, on the West Coast of Ireland. In place of the heavily symbolic skeletal rigging at Murrisk, the human element in the UN sculpture is represented by survivors of the trip disembarking in the United States of America. A total of some 150 figures was cast in bronze, the majority on deck, with a small number descending the gangplanks.

The sculpture was cast at a foundry in Kilmainham, Dublin 8. Sculptor, John Behan is one of Ireland’s leading artists, his work is included in collections owned by, amongst others, President Clinton, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Placido Domingo and the late Samuel Beckett.

Categories
Architecture Photos Urban

Solidarity Among Sisters

This sculpture was created by Silvio Russo and was a gift by the Arab women to the women of the world. The artist has shaped this gift in the form of an abstract image of a number of women, each of whom is holding out her hand to the next. This image then becomes transformed, with great artistic perception, into a radiant sun with its rays and warmth extending in all directions.

Categories
Architecture Photos Sculptures Urban

Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares

A bronze statue donated by the Soviet Union to the United Nations on 1959. It was sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich to represent the human wish to end all wars by converting the weapons of death and destruction into peaceful and productive tools that are more beneficial to mankind