Just a few more days of The Next Fifty – the anniversary celebration of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair – and we’re featuring artworks on the old fair grounds at Seattle Center.

Head down to Seattle Center before the celebration ends on Oct. 21 and check out Alexander Liberman’s largest sculpture Olympic Iliad (1984). The artwork is a monumental agglomeration of steel cylinders located on the lawn surrounding the Space Needle. Liberman, known for his use of industrially manufactured materials, cut giant steel cylinders at varying angles and lengths, painted them an industrial red, and assembled them to form an immense structure that one can walk around and underneath.

A similar artwork of Liberman’s, Iliad, can be found at the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, N.Y.

Olympic Iliad was funded by private contributions, the Seattle Center Foundation and Seattle Center 1% for Art, and is part of the city’s permanent public art collection.

Last week we featured Seattle Mural by Paul Horiuchi at Seattle Center’s Mural Amphitheater. Read more about that artwork here.

IMAGE: Alexander Liberman, Olympic Iliad, 1984, steel cylinders. Photo by Amy Louise Herndon.

-Tamara Gill, Community Development & Outreach