Before LOVE, there was non-commitment: a sculpture nobody could make heads or tails of.
Over the first week of September in 1967, the city installed Henry Moore’s “Three-Way Piece” bronze sculpture on black granite base at then-named John F. Kennedy Plaza. It would be the work’s second move, but not its last.
Opinions on what the seven-foot hollow sculpture represented ranged wildly:
Birds? A damaged ship? Toothaches?
A candid camera setup?
One businessman, cryptically, told The Inquirer: “That’s what the next generation is going to look like.”
Of course, it’s abstract art and this is Philadelphia, so they made of it whatever they wanted.
An Inquirer reporter called it “an exercise in satisfying form without representing anything in particular.”
It was the work of Moore, a notable British sculptor. And it was purchased by the Fairmount Park Art Association, which in the ’60s was a private group that was behind many of the sculpture installations across the city.
The sculpture, completed in 1964, arrived at the Museum of Art in March 1966. It was moved to the plaza on 16th Street that flanks the Municipal Services Building because “its monumental, rounded forms make exciting contrast with the vertical lines of the nearby buildings,” the museum director told The Inquirer.
In 1976, Robert Indiana’s “LOVE” sculpture was installed in the plaza as part of the U.S. Bicentennial celebration. Informally, the plaza would adopt the moniker, “Love Park.”
But the name didn’t become official until 2016, as part of a dramatic renovation and overhaul of the space, which officially reopened in 2018.
The Moore sculpture was moved to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, between 16th and 17th Streets, in the 1990s. It still remains there today, where it continues to baffle and intrigue its admirers.