''Walking to the Sky'' is an outdoor

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable ...

by Jonathan Borofsky. The original was installed at

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span th ...

in the fall of 2004 before being moved to the

Nasher Sculpture Center Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Art ...

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

in 2005. A copy is installed on the campus of

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. Another copy is installed in front of the Kiturami Homsys Co. building in Hwagok-dong, Gangseo-gu,

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. The seven-ton work depicts a little girl, a businesswoman, a young man, and several others scaling a soaring 100-foot-tall stainless steel pole. Three people are looking upward from the base of the pole, which points to the east at a 75-degree angle. A similar work by Borofsky, entitled "Woman Walking to the Sky", is installed in the center of Strasbourg, France, near the memorial for the synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazi occupiers of the city in 1940. The piece was inspired by a story that Borofsky's father used to tell him when he was a child about a friendly giant who lived in the sky. In each tale, father and son would travel up to the sky to talk to the giant about what needed to be done for everyone back on earth. The artist says the sculpture is "a celebration of the human potential for discovering who we are and where we need to go."

Carnegie Mellon University replica

Carnegie Mellon installed ''Walking to the Sky'' in May 2006 on its campus in front of Warner Hall just off Forbes Avenue. The sculpture was a gift from CMU Trustee Jill Gansman Kraus (A'74) and her husband, Peter Kraus, of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The sculpture generated controversy among the student body for its appearance, the choice of location, and the lack of campus involvement in selecting and siting the piece. The campus newspaper described it as "an eyesore" and "a huge phallus" while others have expressed displeasure at its location as one of the first things seen of the campus from Forbes Avenue. Due to apparent structural instability, the sculpture had to be replaced in October 2009.

References

Outdoor sculptures in Texas Outdoor sculptures in Pennsylvania Carnegie Mellon University Buildings and structures in Dallas 2004 sculptures Steel sculptures in Texas Sculptures by Jonathan Borofsky Steel sculptures in Pennsylvania Steel sculptures in South Korea Outdoor sculptures in South Korea {{Texas-sculpture-stub