Status of ‘Angelic’ is still up in the air

One local public artwork -- “Angelic Duet,” an abstract sculpture by James Russell that was a fixture in downtown Los Angeles for 2 1/2 decades and disappeared early last year -- has a new home: a state storage facility in Sacramento.

“It’s in limbo,” says Paul Moses, an associate of Russell, who maintains a studio in Lomita.

The 36-foot-tall stainless-steel work, composed of two undulating columns, was commissioned for a state office building at 1st Street and Broadway and installed near its entrance in 1979.

The artwork was removed after the state sold the property to the federal government and closed the building. Plans call for the existing structure to be razed and replaced by a courthouse, but funds for the project have been delayed.

The California Arts Council, which oversees state-owned artworks, has tried to put the sculpture back on public view over the past year, Moses says. Attempts to find a place for it on another state property have been unsuccessful, but council representatives are talking to the federal General Services Administration about returning it to its original site when the new building materializes.

This is not the first time “Angelic Duet” has raised questions about government-funded art. In 1978, Russell won a $60,000 commission to produce the sculpture, only to see the commission canceled amid a flurry of Prop. 13 cost-cutting. He and state architect Sim Van der Ryn successfully lobbied to go ahead with the project, arguing that it had been funded before the proposition was passed.