Kehinde Wiley Sculpture Coming to DOORWAYS Campus

Apotheosis of St. Louis on Art Hill in Forest Park. Man on Horse on Wydown Boulevard, near Hanley Road in Clayton. The sculpture of Union General Franz Siegel, also in Forest Park. All are equestrian monuments that define the art of sculpture in St. Louis.

A fourth monumental work titled Rumors of War will soon be permanently sited on the DOORWAYS campus in North St. Louis. Commissioned by Kehinde Wiley, one of the nation’s leading sculpture artists, Rumors of War will make the organization's new campus on the North Side of St. Louis a landmark in public art and social consciousness. The work is a generous long-term loan to DOORWAYS from the St. Louis-based Gateway Foundation.  

Wiley has been well recognized for his large-scale portrait paintings, which feature African American men and women wearing contemporary dress in poses based on well-known images of historical Western artworks — most often royals and generals. He garnered even more renown for painting the official Presidential portrait of President Barack Obama, which now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

Rumors of War will be sited at the entrance plaza just outside the new headquarters building, at 1101 North Jefferson Avenue, northwest of its intersection with Dr. Martin Luther King Drive.

The bronze sculpture, which will be placed on a stone pedestal, measures 53 inches high x 64 inches wide x 24 inches deep. It is one of nine smaller versions, or “editions,” of a larger sculpture that Wiley made for placement in Richmond. The new piece is scheduled to be installed in the summer of 2022, when work at the new campus is completed. This piece will immediately establish DOORWAYS’s campus as a landmark for contemporary art, not only in North St. Louis but in the entire St. Louis region and beyond.  

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