Dear Editor, If Birmingham is ever to break into the world’s top cities, what would be better placed outside the new Reference Library than a sculpture by the American Richard Serra?
There is only one example of his extraordinary artistic work in this country, “Fulcrum” outside Liverpool Street Station in London, a 55ft freestanding sculpture from 1987.
Serra’s sculptures are large assemblies of sheet metal, such as “Snake” which is a trio of sinuous steel sheets creating a curving path. It is permanently located in the largest gallery of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.
Last year Serra had a major retrospective exhibition in the prestigious New York Museum of Modern Art, which has the largest single collection of his work. He also had a installation “Promenade” exhibited this year in the Grand Palais Museum in Paris to popular acclaim; it was described as “A radical, poetic landscape of steel, minimalist yet full of movement.”
If Birmingham is to become a world top 20 city it must think big and commission a piece of modern art worthy of the 21st century, such as one of Serra’s sculptures.
A Richard Serra sculpture could do for Birmingham city centre what Anthony Gormley’s “Angel of the North” has done for Gateshead and the head of the Team Valley; Birmingham badly needs a piece of iconic modern sculpture.
M D Packer,
Frankley
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Brown recruits at dole office
Dear Editor, In our high street we have lost Rosenbys, Woolworths, McDonalds, and an MFI store, and in the same week as Woolworths going into receivership the Government has changed the rules on single parents so I’m more than curious as to know exactly where all the jobs are that Gordon Brown and his cronies keep telling us are out there when, as far as I can see, the only place recruiting will be the dole office.
S T Vaughan,
Birmingham
