Virtuoso

A giant head and a pair of hands, playing an instrument, loom over the corner outside Lyric Market in Houston's Theater District. Virtuoso is the work of the Houston sculptor David Adickes, who died in July 2025.

The Downtown Houston district gives its height as 36 feet and its weight as 21 tons, and dates it to 1983; behind the main figure stands a life-size group of abstract musicians playing violin, double bass and flute. It says the work was commissioned to 'pay homage to music, dance and performing arts'. Adickes himself remembered it differently in a Visit Houston interview, saying 'Virtuoso was in 1984 and that was my first major exposure to the public', and that the columns of the building were 36 feet, so the figure had to match. A Library of Congress photograph caption gives 1988, and Walter P Moore, which moved it, gives 25 tons.