Driving Forces: Sculpture by Lin Emery

This exhibition featured kinetic sculptures by the internationally recognized New Orleans artist Lin Emery. Four large-scale sculptures, made to move in the wind, were on view in the Jane and Harry Willson Sculpture Garden, while smaller sculptures were exhibited indoors. The sculptures take their cue from music, dance and natural forms, especially flowers and trees, both in their shapes and in how they respond to a passing breeze. Equal parts delicate and strong, her sculptures also reflect the port city that became her adopted home through her use of industrial materials often used for boat building there, such as brushed or polished marine aluminum.

Emery’s early life was marked by restlessness. Born in New York City, she moved often and had a peripatetic educational journey, eventually studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. It was there that she met and studied under famed Russian sculptor Ossip Zadkine before settling in New Orleans. Her work is in the collections of the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia; the Delaware Museum of Art in Wilmington; the Museum of Foreign Art in Sofia, Bulgaria; and the Flint Institute of Art in Michigan.