Olympic Iliad (41 steel cylinders)

Seattle, Washington, United States

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Olympic Iliad is a 1984 sculpture by Alexander Liberman west of the Space Needle at Seattle Center. Seattle Center describes it as 41 steel cylinders, 48 to 64 inches in diameter, cut at angles, piled up and painted industrial red, so that visitors can walk around and underneath.

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Olympic Iliad (41 steel cylinders)

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Site-level location · 47.6194° N, 122.3501° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

Few Seattle Center landmarks let you walk underneath a pile of giant steel pipes. Olympic Iliad, west of the Space Needle, is a heap of 41 cylinders that Seattle Center describes as Alexander Liberman's largest sculpture.

According to Seattle Center, the cylinders range from 48 to 64 inches in diameter and were cut at varying angles and lengths, piled on top of each other with three points touching the ground for support, painted an industrial red and assembled into a structure that people can walk around and underneath. The lawn around its base was originally a lagoon. UPI, reporting in April 1985, said it was considered Liberman's masterpiece and described a 46-foot arch of tubular forms weighing 40 tons that thrust from a reflecting pool.

Liberman, whose youth was in Russia according to UPI, came to the United States in 1941 and, UPI noted, was also editorial director of Condé Nast, the magazine publisher, from 1962. He generally painted his sculptures red or white. He told UPI that red seemed to work best in cities where the dominant colour is grey, because it gives a good contrast. Seattle Center says a similar Liberman work, Iliad, is at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York.

Seattle Center says Olympic Iliad was funded through private contributions, the Seattle Center 1% for Art programme and the Seattle Center Foundation, and is administered by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

The work sits on open lawn on the Seattle Center campus; check Seattle Center for campus hours.

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An outdoor sculpture on the lawn west of the Space Needle that Seattle Center says visitors can walk around and underneath. It is part of the wider Seattle Center campus, which has other public art nearby.

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West of the Space Needle on the Seattle Center campus in Seattle. Check Seattle Center for campus hours and any event closures.

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Find another Big Thing nearby

Hammering Man is Jonathan Borofsky's 48-foot-high steel silhouette of a working man, whose arm the City of Seattle said in 2012 hammers four times a minute, outside the Seattle Art Museum at 1st Avenue and University Street. It was commissioned for the 1991 In Public programme and permanently installed in 1992.

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