Opinion: A sculpture in perpetual motion, removed

Workers remove the sculpture "Blue" by artist Joel Shapiro on the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Mark Schiefelbein/AP hide caption

A big blue presence has vanished from the landscape of Washington DC.

On Wednesday a crew removed a 24-foot-tall metal sculpture called Blue, by Joel Shapiro, from the grounds of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Our family turned out to say goodbye.

Blue is a giant stick figure with what seems to be four limbs, standing on what might be one leg, while the other is lifted. To walk, to leap, to dance? The upper-most limbs, which look like arms, are extended. To welcome, twirl, swing or sway?

The work was installed on that part of the Kennedy Center's grounds called The REACH, which opened in 2019. I've always thought it seemed an artful fit in that place, which before the Center became a source of controversy during the Trump presidency, abounded just about every night with music, dance, and all kinds of shows — available to the public for free.

"It's about action and risk and performance and energy," sculptor Joel Shapiro, who died last year, said in a video about Blue that was on the Kennedy Center website, "It's a celebration of possibility."

But Josef Palermo, who was let go this past March as curator of visual arts and special programming at the Kennedy Center, told the New York Times this week that Blue had been "targeted early on" for removal by the Trump administration, which might have seen something else in the sculpture. Well, isn't "seeing something else" art?

The Kennedy Center, where President Trump's supporters are now in charge, issued a statement saying, "We are deeply grateful to Joel Shapiro for the years Blue has spent animating our campus and connecting visitors to his vision."

I think part of what made Blue so engaging is that the figure in implied perpetual motion along the capital's riverfront stirred people to imagine for themselves what might have set the big blue figure to whirl, spin, stomp, or prance.

We met a man at the dismantling who works for the artist's foundation who told us that Blue will be cleaned, reassembled, and, he was sure, reinstalled in some new spot.

Maybe removing Joel Shapiro's Blue so summarily from its perch at the Kennedy Center will make people even more eager to seek out the towering figure who caused such a stir.

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