After Conservation, AVAM's Iconic Giant Whirligig Returns This Week
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Baltimore's American Visionary Art Museum gets its trademark outdoor art installation, the Vollis Simpson Giant Whirligig, back on Tuesday.
The 55-foot tall kinetic sculpture was disassembled and shipped to conservationists at the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park and Museum in Wilson, North Carolina in January after the museum got a $50,000 grant from the state to preserve it.
North Carolina artist Vollis Simpson made the wind-powered sculpture from recycled industrial materials, a craft the former farm machinery repairman became synonymous with in his hometown of Wilson, where 30 of his works are on display in a park.
Simpson and his two sons traveled to the museum the year it opened, in 1995, to personally install the sculpture, named "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
The sculpture sustained 27 years of rain, wind and snow since Vollis installed it. Now, the newly conserved sculpture will be erected in its same position Tuesday in what the museum calls a "dramatic" crane-assisted lift.
According to the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park, Simpson continued making his sculptures until a few months before his death in 2013 at the age of 94.
