Nicholas Galanin installed an animal-hide sculpture to 'interrupt the sightline' of the Gateway Arch
The Alaska-based artist Nicholas Galanin unveiled a new public sculpture this week designed to interrupt the sightline of St Louis's Gateway Arch, the monument built to commemorate westward American expansion. Installed for the Counterpublic art triennial, the piece is a metal sculpture shaped to resemble a stretched animal hide, positioned in direct view of the Arch so that visitors approaching the monument encounter Galanin's work first. It is the latest instance of Galanin's ongoing practice of using site-specific public art to confront monuments and landscapes associated with the displacement of Indigenous peoples, treating the physical interruption of a sightline as a literal form of historical argument rather than a purely conceptual one. The work adds itself to a growing body of contemporary public art nationwide that directly contests, rather than simply supplements, the historical narratives embedded in existing civic monuments.
