The object looked particularly familiar. I had seen the like of it somewhere though certainly not on the Island. As an art historian, I knew that it had to be a piece by Mark di Suvero. Sculpture is not my field of research, however, anyone who has taken an art history 101 class can tell you who Di Suvero is:

Mark di Suvero is the seventy one year old icon of Post-War American Art; one of the greatest living artists in the world. Since his ground-breaking exhibition, in 1960, di Suvero has been working with found objects, including recycled steel. One of the most celebrated proponents of Assemblage movement, the artist’s creations challenge traditional ways of making sculpture in ‘seemingly’ random and chaotic fashion.

During the past ten years, as a resident of Nantucket, I have had to leave our delightful island to pursue my research on critically invigorating art, in other places. Although we have a great number of galleries on the Island, we must admit that very few of them display and promote quality works of art. I am certain that numerous other art historians, curators, artists, and art educators suffer through similar agony of having to leave home to find inspiration… elsewhere!

However, as a museologist who has spent the past decade traveling across the North East and throughout Europe and Asia to study museums and their collections, I appreciate the fact that Nantucket's museums are of international standing. And, now, with the recent inauguration of opening of the newly renovated Whaling Museum, Nantucket promises to become a player in the national museum scene.

Most importantly, however, it is for the benefit of our year-round, as well as seasonal, residents’ cultural and aesthetic appreciation and pleasure that we need to recognize and accept varied and pioneering artistic developments. Not everyone can afford the opportunity to take their family for a stroll in Decordova, UMass Boston’s Arts-on-the-Point or Grounds for Sculpture parks, on a Sunday afternoon!

Accordingly, there are few candidates who can initiate this rejuvenation process as well as di Suvero. The winner of International Sculpture Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award, di Suvero is the founder of the internationally acclaimed Socrates Sculpture Park. Inaugurated in 1986, the 4.5-acre site, located in Long Island City, was once a dumping ground which now also serves its immediate surrounding community. Nantucket is certainly worthy not only of hosting such an icon but of emulating his inspirational paradigm of creating an aesthetically-inspired common ground for all.

Reflecting the Island’s rich and diverse artistic heritage, we need to face the excellent prospect of welcoming art by the likes of di Suvero’s exemplary piece in order to revitalize our tradition. This stance, in turn, will elevate the criteria of artistic production on Nantucket.

Tradition is not about atrophy!

Having spent lengthy periods of time in Britain, pursuing graduate studies, I have come to recognize what ...exhaustively active appreciation of a culture’s Heritage in its most complex and ubiquitous sense... truly means. Much more so than our own Island, in Britain, Heritage is always spelled with capital letters. This is perhaps why, in England, I feel at home…away from home. All this is to say that I deeply appreciate Nantucket’s attempts to protect her time-honored ways.

However, Nantucket is also a modern American community. Islanders certainly show no aversion to monumentality; after all, look at the cars most of us drive and the houses that we either live in or help to build and cater. Nor are we strangers to latest advances in technology; few of us would trade in our costly gadgets -- be they plasma televisions, super-computers or sound systems -- with an old-fashioned black and white TV screen, or a transit radio. We recognize innovation and demand the best that the market has to offer.

So why should Nantucketeers not learn to demand the latest and most critical innovations that American art has contributed to the canon of art history. The likes of di Suvero, Richard Serra and Sol le Witt have produced some of greatest works of art that the world has seen, since WWII. Hence, the presence of a di Suvero on Nantucket is something of which the residents should be darn proud!

*This piece was written as a letter to the editor of The Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror!

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