The Sun and Richard Lippold, 1966

The artist and musician Richard Lippold is perhaps best known in New York City for his spectacular “Orpheus and Apollo” (1962), a five-ton chandelier made of shimmering metal ribbons that once hung in the lobby of the New York Philharmonic. In 2014, after more than fifty years in the public eye, the intricate piece was dismantled for the building’s renovation and its fate remains in limbo. Leo Hurwitz’s hypnotic documentary pays tribute to Lippold’s sculpture “Variation within a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun” (1953–56), a rarely shown work commissioned by The Met. While part of it was once prominently displayed above the Museum’s grand staircase, the piece was controversial from the beginning. Some read the piece as an elegant ode to the cosmos; others declared it “an exploded piece of costume jewelry.”

Read more about “The Sun” and its fraught history at The Met: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1988/03/21/725888.html?pageNumber=50

Check out the Preservation League of New York State’s list of “Seven to Save” 2020–21: https://www.preservenys.org/blog/seven-to-save-2020-2021

Learn about “Variation with a Sphere, Number 10: The Sun”: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/632931

As part of The Met’s 150th anniversary in 2020, each month we will release three to four films from the Museum’s extensive moving-image archive, which comprises over 1,500 films, both made and collected by the Museum, from the 1920s onward. This includes rarely seen artist profiles and documentaries, as well as process films about art-making techniques and behind-the-scenes footage of the Museum.

New films every week: https://www.metmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults

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