Football Player

Concourse D, post-security

Between Gates D47 & D48

 

Football Player

Duane Hanson

October – February 10, 2020

 

Football Player, a hyperrealist sculpture created in 1981 by American artist Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996), will be on view for the first time to the travelling public at Miami International Airport. In the sixties, Hanson created his own familiar technique of casting in polyester resins reinforced with fiberglass. Casting from live models, Hanson would use partial body molds which he would then assemble and perfect until the figure matched his conception. For Football Player, the model was longstanding sculptor Robert Thiele (and former professional athlete), who lives and works in both Brooklyn, New York and Miami, Florida.

Known for his uncanny hyperrealist sculptures portraying working-class Americans, Hanson saw himself not as a maker of shockingly realistic effigies but as a keen social observer. Born in Alexandria, Minnesota in 1925, Hanson went on to receive his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1951. His works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, among others. Hanson died on January 6, 1996 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Football Player is on loan from the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami.