Zaq Landsberg's"Reclining Liberty," 2021, installation view from Morningside Park, New York. Photo by the artist, courtesy of MoCA.
Arlington’s Museum of Contemporary Art has announced that its front lawn will be the next resting place for Zaq Landsberg’s 25-foot long “Reclining Liberty” sculpture. The sculpture, first installed by Landsberg in Manhattan in April of 2021, is modeled after the massive reclining Buddha statues found across Asia, which depict the Buddha during his final illness, preparing to enter parinirvana with a peaceful look on his face.
Landsberg, who is based in New York City, often creates large-scale, public artworks that can be found from Queens to Argentina. His merger of the iconographic Buddhist image and the classic symbol of the American Dream nudges viewers to think about what the Statue of Liberty represents in a modern United States. “I love that the work brings the Statue down to the eye level of the public,” Blair Murphy, MoCA Arlington’s Curator of Exhibitions, said in a statement.