American Monuments - Finding New Dimensions: Large Scale Public Works -- Real and Imagined, 1982-2022

From 1982 to 2022, John Van Alstine created and installed eighteen large sculptures in the United States and abroad while developing another eighteen proposals that remain unrealized. Although these monumental projects are fewer compared with the over 800 studio works he produced during this 40-year period, they represent a significant part of his career and important contributions to public art that cannot be overlooked.

American Monuments: Finding New Dimensions chronicles this aspect of Van Alstine’s art and highlights the significance of large-scale works in his career. Known primarily for work created in the studio and exhibited in galleries and museums, Van Alstine’s public works reveal a distinct and vital facet of his legacy.

The book delves into a series of works that go beyond what many people typically know about Van Alstine, providing an even more insightful perspective on one of the masters of American sculpture, offering a fresh angle to the previous two books on his life and career, John Van Alstine Sculptures 1971-2018 and American Vistas: The Art and Life of John Van Alstine.

What emerges is an artist who used scale to expand his overall object-making aesthetic. Van Alstine’s art is about engaging, elevating and balancing heavy, earthbound materials like stone and steel, infusing them with a sense of weightlessness and animation. By breathing life into these otherwise inert materials, he tells deeply humanistic stories. On a larger scale, his sculptures radiate energy and intensity, bringing his artistic vision to life.