DETROIT (WXYZ) — A 2,500-pound sculpture by renowned artist Harry Bertoia has found its permanent home at General Motors' new headquarters in Detroit's Hudson's building, completing a remarkable 50-year journey that saw the artwork lost, buried, and miraculously recovered.
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The untitled Bertoia masterpiece required an extraordinary installation effort that Mike McBride, GM's vice president of non-manufacturing facility operations, described as "open heart surgery on the building."
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"It was like an architectural feat to get it in here," McBride said.
The installation team created a 15-by-75-foot opening on the south side of the building and designed manual hoists to lift the massive sculpture into place.
"You literally have people manually, chain by chain, pulling it to the ceiling," McBride said.
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Bertoia originally commissioned the piece in 1970 for the Genesee Valley Center in Flint, which was developed by Hudson's. The sculpture remained there for about a decade before disappearing from public view.
"He was a very prominent sculptor in the Detroit area," said Natalie Morath, lead archivist and curator at GM Design. "So, it was sort of lost or thought to be — disappeared for a little while."
In 1980, the sculpture was moved to Northland Mall in Southfield. When the mall was demolished, the artwork was buried under debris for years until the Southfield Arts Commission discovered it in 2017.
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"Everyone assumed it had disappeared and been lost," said Ken Siver, Southfield's mayor, who was present during the discovery.
Siver photographed the bent and broken piece resting among 110 acres of rubble from the former mall's basement.
"Years of dust accumulated on this piece. In confirming this, we were thrilled," Siver said.
The city contracted Michigan-based Flatlanders to restore the sculpture to its original condition, a process that took months of careful work.
"Obviously, what we had wasn't glistening," Siver said.
The sculpture's placement at GM's headquarters in the Hudson's building creates a full-circle moment, as Hudson's was the original developer of the piece's first home in Flint.
"It's a perfect come full circle," Siver said.
Morath believes the sculpture has found its ideal location.
"It's hard for me to imagine the piece anywhere else, because it's just perfect for the space," Morath said.
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