National Museum of the American Indian
Outdoor Sculpture: Obelisk
September 11, 2008 – August 16, 2009
Obelisk (1987, ed. 2/6) is a 15 1/2 foot-tall, 1,500-pound, cast-bronze sculpture by renowned Native American artist Fritz Scholder (1937-2005; Luiseno). Scholder's obelisk was inspired by his long fascination with all things Egyptian. After an unsuccessful attempt to acquire an ancient obelisk in Egypt in the 1970s, Scholder decided to create his own. He and his former wife, Romona, asked a street vendor to translate their names into hieroglyphics. Those glyphs appear on the sculpture, along with others that Scholder invented.
See related exhibition Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian. On loan from the Collection of New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
