Will Orpheus return from the underworld this time? Will Apollo ever glitter again in sunlight? Is it possible that one of the largest works of public art in New York — a five-ton, 190-foot-long, 39-foot-high sculpture — could disappear with few people noticing?
Twenty-one months have passed since Lincoln Center announced that Richard Lippold’s monumental sculpture “Orpheus and Apollo” — a midcentury Modern explosion of polished metal strips that floated, with the help of some 450 steel wires, for more than 50 years over the grand foyer of what was first called Philharmonic Hall and then Avery Fisher Hall — was being “removed temporarily for maintenance and conservation.”
