Art by Richard Serra

Serra worked almost exclusively in massive curved and tilted sheets of Cor-Ten steel, sculptures heavy and large enough that walking through or alongside them changes how a visitor's own body feels in space, closer to architecture than to sculpture in the traditional sense. His 1981 public sculpture Tilted Arc, a 120-foot steel wall installed across a New York federal plaza, became the center of a bitter public fight after office workers who used the plaza campaigned for its removal, arguing it blocked their path and felt oppressive; a public hearing in 1985 ruled against the artist, and the piece was dismantled in 1989, a case still cited in debates over public art, permanence, and who actually gets a say in what stays. He died in 2024.