Sacramento, Calif. – This past fall, the Sacramento International Airport unveiled a $1.3 billion addition. The new construction features 14 major artworks by highly regarded artists; in total, these works cost $6 million, making the collection Sacramento’s single largest investment in public art.
One of the dominant pieces in the collection, The Baggage Handlers by Christian Moeller, is a portrait of six of the airport’s operations workers, rendered in wood and hung as a relief sculpture. Moeller worked from photos to create the two looming wood panels, each 75 feet by 12 feet, fixed side-by-side in the ticketing hall.
Glass artist Mildred Howard created This House Will Not Pass For Any Color But Its Own for the area just beyond the security screening area. The work is a structure about the size of a bus shelter created out of red posts and hand-blown sheets of purple glass. It is a place of rest for harried travelers—a home away from home—and a thought-provoking reflection on the nature of home. The purple glass scatters refracted light throughout the sun-filled concourse during the day.
All the works in the collection are large in scale. A 56-foot-long, 19-foot-tall red rabbit by Lawrence Argent called Leap hangs above the escalators that lead to baggage claim. Artist Donald Lipski’s “grand chandelier,” which is titled Acorn Steam, is made of three massive valley oak tree trunks that branch out into a delicate canopy approximately 30 feet in diameter. Each branch is hung with Swarovski crystals that catch and reflect the sun during the day and the artificial light at night.
Other artists in the collection include Ned Kahn, Camille Utterback, Gregory Kondos, Joan Moment, Suzanne Adan, Lynn Criswell, and more.
