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Installed in: 1973-1974
Location: Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
About the Artist: While widely recognized as a sculptor, Newman was also a dedicated educator. He came to Kalamazoo in 1949 as part of the University of Michigan’s extension program. Newman believed community art programs could be as stimulating and rewarding as those offered at the college level. He recruited a dedicated group of teachers to help develop the Kalamazoo Institute of the Arts art school.
About the Sculpture: "One of the figures in the row of the fashionably elite sports an inverted paper bag, a kind of silly gesture that pops up at parties as social inhibitions loosen. For Newman it offered a way of gently satirizing the game-playing that underlies almost any social interaction.’’
The nine figures that make up that work are "comic, ample, ridiculous, gangly, absurd, lumpy, buxom and perhaps political, enigmatic and appealing," – quote from the Kalamazoo Gazette, 1974.
Information retreived from artist’s personal website http://www.kirknewman.com/theartist.html
Photograph by Patrick Jouppi, 2011
Slideshow images by Jade Wethy, 2013