Photos By Gail

When Geoffrey was in town recently for his annual visit, we did our usual whirlwind tour of art museums in Manhattan and beyond. Our stop at the New Museum was my first visit since it reopened in March after being closed for two years during its massive expansion. And boy, was I surprised when I saw the first public art commission greeting visitors in the museum’s exterior plaza. I knew immediately it had to be the work of Sarah Lucas. Because if you know, you know.

The sculpture, VENUS VICTORIA (2026) by the British artist  is the inaugural public-art commission for the museum’s new outdoor plaza at Bowery and Prince Street. Hello!

For this work,  Lucas has created a playful, highly stylized figure with long, tubular limbs, a rounded body and a distinctly surreal presence. She sits astride an enormous cast-concrete washing machine, legs and arms flung outward as though she has claimed the Bowery as her personal playground.

The sculpture is part of Lucas’s long-running exploration of the human body, sexuality and gender, subjects she often approaches with humor, irreverence and a healthy disregard for convention. VENUS VICTORIA also relates to her Bunny series, which began in the 1990s and similarly transforms the female figure into exaggerated, biomorphic forms.

I particularly love the incongruity of the piece. A monumental public sculpture traditionally makes us think of heroic figures, historical events or something suitably solemn. Lucas gives us a pink, almost cartoon-like female form in bright yellow pumps sitting on a washing machine instead. It’s funny,  provocative and definitely  impossible to ignore.

The New Museum selected Lucas as the first artist in a new public-art program devoted to presenting sculpture by women artists. She was chosen by an all-woman, all-artist jury that included Teresita Fernández, Joan Jonas, Julie Mehretu, Cindy Sherman and Kiki Smith. VENUS VICTORIA will remain on view for two years, after which another woman artist will take over the plaza. Exciting!