Louise Nevelson’s "Sky Landscape," by Louise Nevelson, dedicated in 1983, is at the corner of Vermont Avenue and L Street NW in Washington. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

There is a sculpture at the corner of Vermont Avenue and L Street NW. Whenever I drive by, I want to hop out and read the plaque, if there is one, but the light always changes. Who is the sculptor?

— Jan Rich, Washington

The piece — called “Sky Landscape” — was made by Louise Nevelson, once regarded as America’s greatest living sculptor. Like a lot of Americans, she came from somewhere else.

She was born Louise Berliawsky in 1899 in Kiev. The family moved to Maine in 1905, where her father established a lumber business. In 1920, she married wealthy shipowner Charles Nevelson. (They separated in 1931.)

The creator of “Sky Landscape,” artist Louise Nevelson, poses beneath her work “Sky Gate, New York” at the World Trade Center in Manhattan in 1978. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Nevelson seemed like a work of art herself: erect, with a dancer’s mien and thick mascara. She knew from a young age that she was destined for fame in something, but she wasn’t sure what. She studied opera and dramatics in New York, worked as an extra in the German film industry and was an assistant to the painter Diego Rivera. It was her artwork that was to bring her acclaim — although not until she was in her 40s.

Answer Man wonders whether Nevelson took inspiration from her father’s lumber business. As a sculptor, she was known for her wooden boxes packed with dowels, spindles, molding and other scraps, much of it scavenged from the street — all painted black.

She loved black, Nevelson said, because “it contained all color. It wasn’t a negation of color. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colors. Black is the most aristocratic color of all. . . . You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.”

In an appreciation of Nevelson after her death in 1988, The Washington Post’s Paul Richard wrote: “Though they built on the familiar, her finest wooden sculptures — with their stacked-up boxlike forms, their look of darkness upon darkness and their sense of gathered ghosts — added something new to 20th-century art.”

Nevelson’s outdoor sculptures were perhaps not as groundbreaking, but they were certainly epic. The one at Vermont Avenue and L Street NW stands nearly 30 feet high and is composed of 10 tons of Cor-ten steel, cut and welded in various shapes and painted black. It was commissioned by the American Medical Association, which built its headquarters at the corner.

In fact, the building was designed to incorporate “Sky Landscape.” The right angle of the building was “sliced off” to create a plaza for the piece, which sits on a circular stone base. (The base has a metal plaque, but whatever was engraved on it has been smoothed off. Answer Man couldn’t find Nevelson’s name anywhere.)

The neighborhood was a bit sketchy in the early 1980s, and the arrival of the AMA was seen as a shot in the arm. At the sculpture’s dedication, then-Mayor Marion Barry noted that “before this structure was built, we knew what was on this corner some of the time — particularly in the evening.”

Prostitutes is what he meant.

There is another large, steel Nevelson sculpture on the National Institutes of Health campus. Her work is in many museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art’s. “White Column (from Dawn’s Wedding Feast)” from 1959 is on display on the third floor of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

The American Medical Association paid Nevelson $640,000 for “Sky Landscape” and an untitled second piece, a horizontal wooden wall relief installed in the lobby.

In 2006, the AMA moved to a rented space on Massachusetts Avenue NW near Union Station. The old lobby no longer contains the wall relief. (Anyone know what happened to it?)

At the 1983 dedication of “Sky Landscape,” Nevelson was asked about cutbacks in federal funding for the arts. As with her sculptures, when she gave her answer she was thinking big.

“I think cutting back on the arts doesn’t only mean cutting back on the arts, it means cutting back on civilization,” Nevelson said. “You take away art, and you have nothing. If you go to Egypt and don’t see pyramids, or you go to Persia or Mexico, well, without them we would have no civilization. The word gets lost, but not the visual.”

Twitter: @johnkelly

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