The Art Museum had it installed in the parking lot at the south entrance of the museum. It was removed in 2008 when the museum began construction of the East Building and placed in storage.

Brent Benjamin, the Art Museum’s director, said Monday that Serra was “the most important living sculptor in America” and noted that the piece proposed for Forest Park is “his first major outdoor sculpture.” The museum has checked with Serra, and “this is the site he would prefer,” Benjamin said.

St. Louis has had ties to Serra and his minimalist work for nearly 50 years thanks to the influence of Joseph Pulitzer Jr., the late editor and publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and his widow, Emily Rauh Pulitzer. Joseph Pulitzer commissioned one of Serra’s first site-specific works at his home in 1970.

Mrs. Pulitzer, a former Art Museum curator and noted patron of the arts, was among members of the committee that selected Serra’s work for the Gateway Mall. And Serra’s other well-known St. Louis work, “Joe,” was commissioned for the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, the private museum she built in Grand Center.

“Joe enabled me to do what I wanted to do, and as much as I wanted it to happen, he was the catalyst necessary to make it happen,” Serra recalled in a 1988 lecture at Harvard University.