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Hallelujah is a 2009 abstract sculpture by Albert Paley in the front plaza of the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in Charleston, West Virginia. Paley's studio gives it as 68 feet high, in weathering steel, stainless steel and bronze.
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Hallelujah
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Site-level location · 38.3481° N, 81.6294° W
FIELD GUIDE
The story
Hallelujah is a 198,000-pound abstract sculpture of weathering steel, stainless steel and bronze, and it stands in the front plaza of the Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences in Charleston, West Virginia. Albert Paley's studio dates it to 2009 and gives its size as 68 feet high, 39 feet wide and about 33 feet 8 inches deep. A trade report on its erection in November 2009 gave a lower height of 64 feet, with a 24-foot-diameter base opening out to a 40-foot-diameter top; the same report supplied the weight.
The Clay Center lists the work as a gift of the McGee Foundation, made in honor of Lyell B. Clay. It was built by a metal fabricator in Arcade, New York, and trucked to Charleston in 12 pieces and four ribbons. A 115-ton crane from ALL Crane & Equipment Rental of St. Albans, West Virginia, set the sections in place, where they were bolted together; the base section alone weighed 40,000 pounds. The report described it as a US$900,000 sculpture.
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WHAT TO EXPECT
An outdoor sculpture in the front plaza of the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, which also houses an art museum, a science discovery museum and a planetarium. The Clay Center lists museum and cafe hours of Tuesday to Saturday 10 am to 5 pm and Sunday noon to 5 pm.
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In the front plaza of the Clay Center, 1 Clay Square, Charleston. The Clay Center is open to the public in its listed hours; whether the plaza can be entered outside those hours is unclear.
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