A Wyeth it isn't
Pennsylvania Gazette
November, 1975, p. 38
"Covenant," the Alexander Lieberman construction of steel pipe painted
bright red that arches 40' high over Locust Walk at 39th Street, is the
most recent result of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority's
requirement that 1% of construction budgets for buildings built by the
University on land bought from the RDA be spent on public art. Like "We
Lost," the Tony Smith sculpture that appeared on College Green last
spring, "Covenant" was chosen by the Visual Environment Committee (headed
by Mrs. H. Gates Lloyd, long-time chairman of the Institute of
Contemporary Art and a noted collector), and like "We Lost," "Covenant"
has provoked a storm of ridicule, approval, apathy, DP humor columns, etc.
The reaction ranges from one observer's delighted "I think it's great, I
really like it," to a WXPN-organized attempt to knock it over with sound
waves (it failed), to Geology Professor Henry Faul's "I have nothing
against consenting adults doing whatever they do over there at the ICA
behind closed doors, but buying these large objects with real money and
putting them out in public--! The avant garde is the guard in front--they
know there's somebody behind them. Being out in left field is not being
avant-garde. We should satisfy more than a small group. It there are
peasants here who want to buy Wyeth, we ought to."