Comments (0) Best Public Sculpture - 2012
Miró's Personage and Birds
600 Travis St.
Houston, TX 77002
713-223-0441
Joan Miró's Personage and Birds dominates downtown Houston's JPMorgan Chase Tower plaza like a colorful guard standing watch. The steel and cast-bronze sculpture is a representation of a person with birds in flight around the head. The body is a triangle made up of wide bands of metal painted in bright green, red, blue and yellow. A circle of red and yellow metal sits atop the "shoulders," with three abstract shapes circling. The piece is the largest Miró ever commissioned (it is 35 feet wide at its base and stands 55 feet tall), but despite the colossal size, it seems lightweight, as if it could start walking across the plaza at any moment. The piece, chosen by the building's architect, I.M. Pei, was installed to mark Miró's 89th birthday in April of 1982.
