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bronze statues on granite bases

Whitney Biennial in Central Park
 
May - September 2002

Doris C. Freedman Plaza
(Fifth Avenue & 60th Street)

For the first time in recent history, the Public Art Fund and the Whitney Museum of American Art co-curated a major exhibition in Central Park as part of the Whitney Museum's 2002 Biennial Exhibition. Artists Keith Edmier, Roxy Paine, Kiki Smith, Kim Sooja, and Brian Tolle were commissioned to make dynamic new work suited for specific sites within Central Park. Together, these five installations represented a broad overview of contemporary approaches to public art that were both thought-provoking and accessible to the largest possible audience.

Keith Edmier's Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944, appeared as a seemingly conventional war memorial to his grandfathers who both served in the Second World War. Playing upon the traditional figurative statuary located throughout Central Park, this work comprised two ¾-scale bronze figures, each standing atop a granite base engraved with an epitaph. These uncanny figures are depicted in formal military attire, historically accurate to what they would have worn in 1944, the year Edmier's paternal grandfather, Emil Dobbelstein, committed suicide while on active duty at a military base in Missouri. Henry J. Drope, his mother's father, died in 1995 at the age of seventy-nine. By acknowledging his grandfathers' unique roles in World War II's massive history, Edmier's personal narrative complicates the notion of public statuary, resulting in a tender memorial.

Artist Bio
Keith Edmier has had solo shows at Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, as well as at Sadie Coles HQ, London; Metro Pictures, New York; The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland; and Neugerriemschneider Gallery, Berlin, Germany. Recent group exhibitions include The Americans, Barbican Gallery, London; Casino 2001: 1st Quadrennial of Contemporary Art, Stedelijk Museum Voor Actuele Kunst and Bijloke, Gent, Belgium; and Fact/Fiction: Contemporary Art That Walks the Line at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. He attended California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. Edmier was born in Chicago and lives and works in New York.

Sponsorship
Keith Edmier's Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944 is a project of the Public Art Fund program In the Public Realm, which is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President, The Greenwall Foundation, The Jerome Foundation, The Silverweed Foundation, The JPMorgan Chase Foundation, and friends of the Public Art Fund.

The Whitney Biennial in Central Park, organized by the Public Art Fund, was sponsored by Bloomberg. The exhibition received additional support from City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Cultural Challenge Grant 2002, The Third Millennium Foundation, and Melissa and Robert Soros.

Location
Emil Dobbelstein and Henry J. Drope, 1944 was located at Doris C. Freedman Plaza, the southeast entrance to Central Park at Fifth Avenue & 60th Street.