Fox Cities Oracle (Hadzi) bridge sculpture

Few public sculptures are as openly argued over as the Fox River Oracle. It greets drivers crossing the Oneida Street Bridge into downtown Appleton, and a 2025 poll by Rivers Art placed it 68th among America's top 100 "ugliest" public art, a ranking Lawrence University professor Rob Neilson said reflects how divisive, and so effective, the work is.

The work is by Dimitri Hadzi, whom WTAQ calls a world-renowned artist. His own website lists it as a monumental dolomite group measuring 15 by 32 feet at the Oneida Skyline Bridge, and notes that Lawrence University conferred an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree on him on the occasion of its dedication. That site's chronology dates the dedication to 1986; WTAQ gives 1987. Hadzi had earlier made a basalt group, Willamette River Oracle, for the Oregon Sculpture Symposium in 1974, his first work in large-scale stone.