Bellerophon Taming Pegasus

New York, New York, United States

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Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

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Bellerophon Taming Pegasus is a 23-ton bronze by Jacques Lipchitz on Revson Plaza at Columbia Law School, Manhattan. Columbia Law says it is about 30 by 28 feet and was dedicated on November 28, 1977.

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Bellerophon Taming Pegasus

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40.80704° N, 73.96056° W

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The story

When Columbia Law School asked Jacques Lipchitz in 1964 for a work for its campus, the sculptor is quoted as replying: "Don't expect a blinded lady with scales and all those things from me." What he made instead is Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, a 23-ton bronze that Columbia Law's 2012 release describes as about 30 by 28 feet and nearly five stories high, towering above the west entrance of Jerome Greene Hall on Revson Plaza.

It shows the Greek hero Bellerophon wrestling the winged horse Pegasus, whose hooves, wings and tail radiate in all directions. The tangle of bodies stands on a base the school compares to a giant railroad spike driven into the stairs. Lipchitz saw the myth as man's dominance over nature: "law is born from that," he said of observing nature and making rules from it.

The making took a long time. The work was commissioned in 1966; enlargements made from plaster casts in 1969 disappointed Lipchitz, who asked to start over. After his death in 1973 work continued at a foundry in Pietrasanta, Italy. In 1977 the pieces were shipped across the Atlantic and brought up the East River, installed six days later, and dedicated on November 28, 1977. A professor quoted in the New York Times at the ceremony said it looked like him trying to teach criminal law.

Columbia's own accounts differ on the details. A Columbia news walking-tour page gives the creation year as 1967, calls it a gift from Law School alumni, and says it is 57 feet tall including its stand and still regarded as the second-largest metal sculpture in New York City after the Statue of Liberty. A Columbia Magazine walking tour in 2017 stressed that it was not installed upside down.

Columbia Law describes Revson Plaza as a landscaped sculpture garden that bridges Amsterdam Avenue. Columbia Magazine's 2017 walking tour also points to Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece No. 1, nicknamed the tooth.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

View the bronze from Revson Plaza, which Columbia Law describes as a landscaped sculpture garden bridging Amsterdam Avenue, at the west entrance of Jerome Greene Hall. Columbia Magazine's 2017 walking tour also points to Henry Moore's Three-Way Piece No. 1, nicknamed the tooth.

ACCESS

Revson Plaza, at the west entrance of Jerome Greene Hall, Columbia Law School, Morningside Heights, New York. Columbia Law asks visitors to the school to register in advance; check before visiting whether the plaza itself is open to the public.

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USS Maine National Monument

New York City, New York

The USS Maine National Monument is a 57-foot monument at the southwestern (Merchants' Gate, Columbus Circle) entrance to Central Park, Manhattan, honouring sailors lost when the battleship exploded in Havana harbor in 1898. A gilded figure of Columbia in a chariot drawn by three hippocampi crowns a large pedestal with allegorical sculptural groups by Attilio Piccirilli; the architect was H. Van Buren Magonigle.

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4.6 km away

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