So it made sense when a reader asked me what the deal is with that huge, moves-when-it’s-breezy sculpture at the Porter Square T stop. What’s its history? That’ll be easy to answer, I thought. “Gift of the Wind” is an enormous piece of art that’s been there my whole life, a rotating red marker in the familiar Camberville landscape.
The sculpture is 46 feet tall and was designed by Japanese artist Susumu Shingu. It’s been there since Porter was built, a towering monument to an effort called Arts on the Line. That was an innovative T program that brought lots of public art to the revamped Harvard Station, as well as the new Porter, Davis, and Alewife stations as the Red Line was extended northwest in the 1980s.
More than 40 years old, Gift of the Wind keeps on spinning in sun and snow. Does the T, which owns it, regularly maintain the huge moving sculpture? Officials tell me they aren’t aware of the agency conducting any recent maintenance on Gift of the Wind. Also: There’s no funding at this juncture to restore it, they said.
So that’s the deal.
But when I went back one recent snowy day, I realized I had been seeing it for decades, but never really looked at Gift of the Wind. Maybe there was more to the story.
So I looked, really looked, at Gift of the Wind during the day and at night; from near and far; under clear skies and cloudy ones; and in the evening, when golden light from the setting sun seems to change its faded color scheme entirely.
Standing near the Porter Square Dunkin’, I tried to imagine the square without that sculpture. Tried to imagine what it was like to install that sculpture!
The Arts on the Line program was modeled after transit-based public art in places like Paris and Stockholm. But it was the first and largest in the United States, a 1985 T booklet said.
I paged through lots of old newspaper clippings about Porter Station and came upon a name: Pallas Lombardi, the director of Arts on the Line back in the 1980s. One Globe story said she put in 60-plus-hour weeks “trying to get artists, contractors and bureaucrats all to work together” to bring public art to the subway.
Googling, it looked like she had decamped from Massachusetts many moons ago. But I found a number and sent a text.
Lombardi, who is 80 and has been retired in North Carolina since 2018, remembers when they installed Gift of the Wind. It was the middle of the night. Mass. Ave. was shut down. A crane did the heavy lifting. By daybreak, it looked like everything was perfect. The general contractor leading the installation turned to Lombardi, she recalled, and said, “Kid, it’s time to release the fins.”
Workers pulled the ropes away and the sculpture started moving. “Stunning!” Lombardi recalled.
But then: the faint sound of metal touching metal. The sculpture had to be stopped — no small task. Workers made adjustments; everyone came together to problem-solve. By the afternoon, Lombardi said, it started spinning perfectly.
She felt incredible relief and joy at the time. I was pleased to tell her those wings are spinning still.
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Joshua Miller
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Joshua Miller can be reached at joshua.miller@globe.com.