Where have the ‘Big Figures’ gone?

“We were sad to see the work go,” art museum director James Steward said in an e-mail. “It was a great piece to have for that length of time, and now we have a new opportunity to site something there that makes dynamic use of the space.”

He added that the museum is still planning what it will showcase next but is considering commissioning an original work for the site. It would be “premature and potentially misleading” to cite potential artists at this time, though, Steward explained.

“Big Figures” — which is made up of 20 unique, bronze, headless, armless, backless, hollow human forms that each weigh 600 pounds — is only one work in a series of metal headless figures done by the artist, according to Abakanowicz’ website. In total, she has created more than 1,000 figures, which are displayed in museums and private collections in Italy, Australia, Venezuela, Japan and Israel, among other nations.

The sculpture was loaned to the University by Donald and Doris Fisher, parents of Princeton alumni, and has now returned to the Fishers’ sculpture garden in San Francisco, Steward said.

The Fishers, who started Gap Inc. in 1969, are cited as having “one of the world’s most extensive private collections of 20th- and 21st-century art,” according to a 2007 article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper noted that the Fishers own more than 1,000 pieces of modern art, including at least one piece by Andy Warhol.

The disappearance of the bronze statues has elicited a mixed response from students.

“I find it difficult to give good directions this year,” Rivka Cohen ’12 said. “I can’t say things like ‘Walk straight until you pass the extraordinarily disturbing visages of potentially modern art. When you’re level with the leftmost column of the giant, headless bodies, turn right.’ ”

Rachel Sverdlove ’11, though, expressed nostalgia.

“Being on campus all the time, you get used to seeing pieces of art, wherever they are, and expect to see them every time you walk by, like old friends,” she said. “It’s very shocking not to see them there anymore, sort of like the death of an old acquaintance or something.”

Avital Hazony ’12, however, said she was relieved when she noticed their disappearance.

“They always seemed sinister and depressing to me,” Hazony said. “It would be nice if [the art museum] had something as striking, but more positive, instead, since it is such a central location.”

Abakanowicz said she intended for “Big Figures” to be unsettling, though.

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“It happened to me to live in times which were extraordinary by their various forms of collective hate and adulation,” Abakanowicz told the Princeton Weekly Bulletin in 2004, when the figures were originally installed.

“Marchers and parades worshipped leaders, great and good, who turned out to be mass murderers,” explained Abakanowicz, who lived through the occupation of Poland during World War II and the Soviet regime. “I was obsessed by the image of the crowd, manipulated like a brainless organism and acting like a brainless organism. I began to cast human bodies in burlap to finish in bronze, headless and shell-like. They constitute a sign of lasting anxiety.’’

For Derek Welski ’11, though, the statues didn’t produce anxiety. He said he had failed to notice that the figures were gone, though he passes the art museum often and spent last Saturday studying in the Marquand Library.

“I thought that the piece was some really interesting art,” Welski said. “But, ironically, now that it’s gone and nobody had really mentioned it, the message of the statues was extremely subtle and, well, hidden — how each statue was carved with different engravings and designs in the back, but the fronts were completely identical.”

Steward explained that replacing the statues could be a long process if a commissioned work is chosen, as a sculpture fitting the qualifications of the site could take 18 months or more to complete.

He added that such a commission would be joining an “august” tradition at Princeton of modern artists within the University’s Putnam Collection. “This creates a very exciting opportunity to update that collection — focused on the “modern masters” — with the work of a living modern master,” Steward said.

The members of the Fisher family are long-time Princeton benefactors, the donors behind Fisher Hall and the Class of 1976, 1979 and 1983 classrooms in Whitman College. Their three sons, Robert ’76, William ’79 and John ’83, attended the University. Donald Fisher, who died Sunday at the age of 81, also served on the Board of Trustees from 1998 to 2002.