'Reclining Liberty' Statue To Be On Display At Museum Of Contemporary Art Arlington

ARLINGTON, VA — "Reclining Liberty," a 25-foot-long statue depicting the Statue of Liberty in a lounging pose by artist Zaq Landsberg, will be on display on the lawn in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington (MoCA) starting in August.

The public artwork was previously on display at Liberty State Park in New Jersey and in other parts of the New York City area. "Reclining Liberty" will be making its first appearance outside the New York City area when it arrives in Arlington.

The 2,000-pound sculpture will be installed on MoCA Arlington’s front lawn on Wilson Boulevard the first week of August. An opening celebration will be held on Saturday, Aug. 5 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The work will remain on display until July 28, 2024.

The statue depicts the giant reclining Buddha statues of Asia, which represent the Buddha in one stage on the path to enlightenment and are a theme throughout Buddhist art. Landsberg merged the traditional Buddhist reclining pose with an American symbol of liberty, inviting the public to think about the status of the ideals the Statue of Liberty represents.

“I’ve been following Zaq’s practice for many years and when I saw “Reclining Liberty,” I knew it was the perfect work to bring to Arlington,” Blair Murphy, MoCA Arlington’s curator of exhibitions, said in a statement. “Its playfulness and accessibility suggest that the ideals of liberty and freedom represented by the Statue of Liberty are active, tangible, and evolving and need to be directly engaged with, debated, and defended.”

“Reclining Liberty” was originally installed in Morningside Park in Harlem in 2021 and quickly became a neighborhood landmark. In May 2022, the work was relocated to Liberty State Park, where it greeted visitors boarding the ferries to Liberty Island.

Landsberg molded the sculpture using plaster resin and coated it with copper paint and oxidizing acid to match the appearance of the Statue of Liberty and how it has weathered the elements since it was unveiled in 1886, Hyperallergic, a Brooklyn-based news site about art, reported in June.

The statue's yearlong residency at MoCA Arlington, co-sponsored by Arlington Public Art, will be accompanied by a series of public programs.

"We look forward to the community conversations that this sculpture will inspire, including those related to monuments and memorials, immigration, and our democratic ideals," said Angela Anderson Adams, director of Arlington Public Art.

Recontextualizing "Reclining Liberty" in Arlington, near the Pentagon and national monuments in Arlington and Washington, D.C., "adds a new layer onto the work, allows for a new set of meaningful interactions with different communities, and adds to the local and national reevaluation of monuments — their history, how they function in public space, how they’ve changed from their inception, and their impact on society," Landsberg said in a statement.

Landsberg, who was born in Los Angeles and now lives in New York City, has produced works that have been on display in New York, New Jersey and other parts of the U.S., as well as in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

"Reclining Liberty" will be on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington from Aug. 5 to July 28, 2024. The museum is located at 3550 Wilson Blvd. at the former Maury School in the Virginia Square neighborhood of Arlington.