I was immediately attracted to Henry Moore’s Reclining Stringed Figure when I saw it while flipping through the acquisition catalogues at the YCBA. I found the interconnectedness of the brass “strings” intriguing and I loved the way the piece challenged my mind as I tried to see the shape as a figure. I thought the shiny bronze surface would catch the eyes of visitors to the gallery and pleasantly confuse them as it did me, and maybe convince them to step closer as they attempted to figure out what the piece was. The YCBA also doesn’t exhibit much free-standing sculpture, so I thought this would add a new visual experience to the space.

Sadly, one of the few sculptures in the YCBA’s contemporary gallery is a Henry Moore piece very similar to this one. Seeing how similar they were, I didn’t think having a second one would significantly change a viewer’s experience of the object already in the collection, even though this one up for auction I believe to be superior aesthetically and compositionally. In the end, a painting seemed to fit into the collection better than a sculpture and Travis and I ended up choosing a large-scale contemporary painting by Cecily Brown that I felt created an interesting narrative with another piece on display in the collection.