Disciples Divinity House

Renowned sculptor Richard Hunt died December 16 in Chicago, at age 88. His work, "Becoming" (2021), crowns DDH's courtyard. It was commissioned as a memorial to alumnus Thomas V. Stockdale and to encourage and inspire students. Hunt's sculpture summons freedom and possibilities that may be at the edge of imagination but are nevertheless within reach.

Richard Hunt's "Hero Construction" (1958) stands in the Grand Stairway of the Art Institute of Chicago. A 1971 exhibition at MoMA was the museum's first retrospective for an African American sculptor. Hunt was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, the Fifth Star Award from the City of Chicago, the Art Institute's Legends and Legacies Award, eighteen honorary degrees, a Guggenheim fellowship, and dozens of other awards.

According to the Washington Post, Richard Hunt brought a buoyant lyricism to the heaviest of metals, creating works of steel, bronze, copper, and iron that rose skyward like trees or fire or spread outward like wings. Among his 160+ public sculptures are "Flight Forms" (2002) at Midway Airport; "Swing Low" (2016), suspended in the lobby of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture; a towering monument to Ida B. Wells, "Light of Truth" (2021) in Bronzeville; and "Book Bird," for the Obama Presidential Center. Among Hunt's last works was a model for "Hero Ascending," a memorial to Emmett Till that is to be completed by his studio crew and installed outside Till's childhood home.