Its bronze hide has been burnished by the bottoms of generations of Toronto schoolchildren, who have seen it more as a misshapen jungle gym than an icon of late-Modern sculpture. It’s one of the city’s most recognizable symbols, and quite possibly the one-and-only that’s universally loved. It’s sat since 1974 at the corner of Dundas and McCaul Sts., a sturdy icon rooted amid the swirl of a burgeoning metropolis growing up all around it.

And now, Henry Moore’s LargeTwo Forms, that pair of outsize, amorphous doughnuts as much a part of the Art Gallery of Ontario as the building it inhabits, is on the move. The gallery confirmed Wednesday that the beloved sculpture will be uprooted next year and relocated to a new home in Grange Park, the expanse of grass and trees on the gallery’s south side, as part of an $11 million makeover to add playgrounds, trees, bigger expanses of greenspace and a water feature.

Caitlin Coull, the AGO’s manager of communications, told the Star the move was meant to “restore the sculpture to a place of prominence,” saying that the mass of buildings that have gone up all around it since its arrival here 42 years ago have overshadowed it.

Nonetheless, it could be a hard sell for generations of Torontonians who have come to see its Dundas St. location as much a part of the works as the sculpture itself.

“Large Two Forms beautifully anchors the corner of Frank Gehry’s curving facade of the new AGO, and I am trying to think of a good reason why anyone would to think of moving it,” said Geoffrey James, a prominent artist here, and Toronto’s photographer laureate.

Civic icons are few, and not only here, but worldwide. Chicago’s famous “bean,” by Anish Kapoor (it’s actually called Cloud Gate, but its adoption by the public to the point where it’s been renamed in the collective consciousness is a mark of its success) or Robert Indiana’s Love Park in Philadephia are two of the most indelible public art gestures going — universally loved, and a proud projection of a city’s identity to the larger world.

If Large Two Forms, or Moore more generally, doesn’t occupy the same exalted position, it’s surely the closest we’ve got. “The Archer at Nathan Phillips Square,” another major public commission by Moore, James says, “helped to nudge Toronto out of its provincialism. Two Forms has become part of the city’s fabric, and I think we should leave well enough alone.”

Sarah Robayo Sheridan, the curator at the University of Toronto’s Art Museum, is less concerned with the move-from and more about the move-to. “Buildings and publics change, and cultural memory fades,” she wrote in an email. “That’s a natural expectation in a cityscape.”

Most important, she thinks, is whether it’s positioned prominently enough in the park to befit its status. “I wouldn't want to see it reduced to being just another design element in the grand plan,” she says, “so attention needs to be paid to scale in its placement.”

The park has been the gallery’s property since the Grange estate was donated to the Art Gallery of Toronto (the AGO’s predecessor) in 1910, and the city has managed it as a public park for almost as long.

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The redux, slated to reopen in June 2017, is well underway, and the AGO sees Large Two Forms as an opportunity to connect the gallery to the greenspace that it’s always owned. When the park opens to the public, Large Two Forms will be tucked into a leafy glade on its west side.

Luis Jacob, one of the city’s prominent artists and curators, said the relocation will likely cause some initial shock, but that ultimately, it’s for the good. “It’s a landmark – you see kids playing on it, or people lounging on it, having their lunch,” he says. “So yes, it might feel a little naked without it. But I think it being in the park will make it even more prominent. It will signal the park’s connection to the museum.”

The gallery said it was too early to say whether it planned to replace Large Two Forms with another piece at the corner of Dundas and McCaul Sts.

As to the naked corner it will leave behind, Jacob says that should be the museum’s next step. “Of course, it should be replaced with something,” he said. “It’s important to keep that corner as a place for art.”