Jonathan Borofsky’s sculpture Walking to the Sky has been gone from Dallas for so long few remember it was ever here, towering over Nasher Sculpture Center’s garden as seven fiberglass figures — among them a little girl with pigtails and a man in suit and tie — ascended heavenward along its 100-foot-tall steel pole. Long before there was a deck park, before the area was shrouded by trees and towers, you used to be able to see the sculpture from the highway.
And it was a magnificent, majestic work — “a very personal symbol,” Borofsky said Wednesday from his studio in Maine.
The 82-year-old said that as a child, he would sit on his father’s knee as he told tales about “a great giant who lived in the sky and did good things for people.” The sculpture sprung out of that fairytale.
“It was a personal piece. And a spiritual piece,” he said.
Walking to the Sky once served as “a beacon, a guiding light that brought you in,” Mary Poole, the Nasher’s assistant manager of visitor experiences, told me Wednesday when I stopped by. Adrienne Lichliter-Hines, the center’s manager of Communications and International Programs, said, “We do get a lot of visitors asking about that piece.”
The sculpture, a favorite of museum eponym Ray Nasher, was planted in the garden the last week of March 2005, with Nasher and Borofsky overseeing its installation. But it was removed without warning on the morning of Feb. 22, 2010, so Borofsky could oversee the revision of the steel pole’s design to improve its “long-term structural stability” and reduce the impacts of “wind-induced vibration.” The figures were also going to be removed and repainted.
At the time, the Nasher said the restoration process would take a year.
Fifteen years later, it sits in a Los Angeles warehouse.
Since its abrupt departure, I’ve written several pieces wondering about its whereabouts and eventual return. The last time I inquired, in 2017, I was told it was close to coming back. After I read my colleague Mark Lamster’s open letter to the Nasher’s incoming new director, Carlos Basualdo, I decided to ask yet again.
And I was told, yet again, it could return soon — in time, perhaps, for the FIFA World Cup in the summer of 2026.
“That absolutely is a hope,” Jed Morse, the Nasher’s longtime chief curator, told me Wednesday. “We would love nothing more than to have that iconic sculpture up for the public to enjoy when all eyes are on Dallas.”
Given the state of (waves arms) all the things, pining for the return of the sculpture might seem trivial. But Walking to the Sky was much more than a tourist attraction or a photo op. It was aspirational and inspirational, too, a work bearing what its creator calls “a heavy message” perhaps more resonant now than when it was initially installed 20 years ago.
It was only here for five years before its sudden disappearance. That was long enough for its absence to leave a hole in the skyline.
“I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but it’s a spiritual piece because it expresses my amazement at being alive,” Borofsky told me Wednesday. “This rising out of the ground into the unknown expresses that. It’s humanity rising upwards and asking: What does that mean? It’s different for everyone. The pole is the physical connection, but what happens when you lose that?”
In 2004, Borofsky made Walking to the Sky for a public-art exhibition in New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza. That’s where Nasher first saw the piece.
Nasher so adored it that, according to Borofsky, he called the artist’s Manhattan gallery representative to inquire about purchasing it for the center, which he did for a reported $1.5 million. That’s how it became a permanent fixture in what The New York Times called contemporary sculpture’s “lavish public home.”
Nasher called Borofsky “one of the most significant artists of this generation, and I particularly admire the way he can work on a monumental scale and still make objects with wit, spirit, and meaning.”
In the ensuing years, Borofsky made two more versions of Walking to the Sky, which are on display at his alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, and in South Korea. Dallas’ is the original. I want it back. And I know I am not alone.
Morse said there are several reasons for the painful, protracted delay, chief among them the pole, once in two pieces, is now a single, tapered structure with a wider base to further enhance the illusion that it stretches into the blue forever. “It’s bigger, longer and heavier than the original,” he said, which makes sending it back difficult.
It likely can’t go back in the garden, either, which has been enveloped by the canopy of trees planted more than two decades ago. It also requires “a more significant foundation” than it did in 2005, Morse said, “presenting a number of engineering challenges.”
Morse said there are several potential locations being considered, and that proximity to the center remains a priority. Borofsky said that as recently as six months ago, there was even talk of it being planted along a nearby intersection to serve as “an entrance to the Arts District.”
Said Morse, “We want to bring it back. We know people want to see it. We love it too. But we have to consider its long-term conservation needs and protection.”
Borofsky, to his credit, isn’t frustrated by the long, unexpected wait. After all, countless artists’ masterpieces are stashed in museums’ basements indefinitely, abandoned, forgotten. Is he frustrated? Not at all. But does he want it to be seen again? Absolutely.
“It’s a piece that connects with people,” Borofsky said. “It can be a metaphor for learning about ourselves and where we are in the universe. I look at it that way, and people, whether they know it or not, are learning every day. Learning to live with each other. Learning to be happy.”
I’ll be happier when Walking to the Sky is back home.
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