Saturday began with breakfast at 11-Worth on Leavenworth Street and continued with driving around downtown Omaha looking for interesting architecture and sculptures.
The next stop was the Joslyn Art Museum and Sculpture Garden, built in 1931. The sculpture garden included Omaha Riverscape, an installation by Jesus Moroles. Central to the installation is the reflecting pool. The pool floor is composed of 50 tons of Academy Black granite and is a landscape sculpture showing a topographical "map" of a section of the Missouri River and one of its tributaries, the Platte River. Rising from the west end of the pool are 3 columns, each made of a different kind of granite. Capping the pool on its east end is the Broken Earth Water Wall made of 8.5 tons of Dakota Mahogany granite adhering to a concrete core with water flowing in a continuous cascade from its top.
Another sculpture in the garden is Sioux Warrior by John David Brcin and Matthew Placzek. Initially the artist had proposed that two life-size bronze equestrian statues stand at either end of the main east steps: a Sioux warrior and a Pony Express rider. Of the 2, Brcin completed only a plaster model of the Sioux warrior, now realized in bronze by Placzek. The 5,000 pound sculpture sits atop a base of concrete encased in Lake Superior Green granite. Over 100 individual bronze pieces were welded together over a stainless-steel infrastructure.
