This work by Jonathan Silver is one of the Municipal Art Society's more recent gifts to the city. After an exhibition of Silver's work in 1987 at the C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, members of the society expressed a willingness to purchase a piece of his sculpture for the city if a suitable site could be found. The current site in Charles Center, in a quiet, tree-shaded area in the southeast corner of Hopkins Plaza, was chosen, and the piece was installed and dedicated on January 27, 1989.
The bronze piece, very typical of Silver's sculpture, is reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti, whose work Silver studied as an art history graduate student with Meyer Schapiro at Columbia University. The figure of Venus is attenuated yet elegant in its graceful form, which dissolves into pure material at many different points. The arms, the legs, and even the face are at once figurative and amorphous. This mysterious quality gives the piece a certain power, lending the rather slight figure its monumentality.
Source: Kelly, Cindy, Outdoor Sculpture in Baltimore: A Historical Guide to Public Art in the Monumental City, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.