Sculptor George Segal, whose 1979 piece, “Gay Liberation,” was the first public piece of art to commemorate the global struggle for equality, died on this date in 2000. “Gay Liberation” was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund in Cleveland in remembrance of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion, and featured two same-sex couples. Segal pioneered the use of plaster bandage as a sculptural medium; his pieces, mostly left white and realistically portraying people in groups, include “The Holocaust,” 1982. “Gay Liberation” was refused a public exhibition space in both New York and Los Angeles, based on opposition from politicians (for homophobic reasons) and sectors of the gay community (who objected to a straight artist being chosen for the commission, though Segal had previously included gay and lesbian couples in his works). The sculpture was first erected at the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto in 1984 — where it was attacked with a hammer and twice more with spray-paint and other tools of vandalism. In Madison, Wisconsin, too, the sculpture was vandalized at least once. In 1992, it was at last erected in Christopher Park in Greenwich Village.
“The sculpture concentrates on tenderness, gentleness and sensitivity as expressed in gesture. It makes the delicate point that gay people are as feeling as anyone else.” —George Segal