Following its autumn-long appearance on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a 10-foot eponymous  was installed on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’ own busy thoroughfare, Alumni Walk, on Dec. 5.

On loan to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for a year, the approximately 4-ton metal sculpture, formally named Legacy Mantle (Mao Jacket), is by contemporary Chinese Artist .

Mark Bessire, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, says that he first spied the sculpture in Beijing as he was organizing the museum’s exhibition. He wanted Sui’s piece in that exhibition, but shipping the sculpture from China to Lewiston would’ve busted his budget.

Professor of History Dennis Grafflin touches the rough, rusty metal surface.

Professor of Mathematics Chip Ross, exiting Pettengill Hall, looks askance at Mao Jacket.

Director of the Museum of Art Mark Bessire says that he first saw the sculpture in Beijing, outside artist Sui Jianguo's studio.

Standing together in front of the sculpture, history professor Dennis Grafflin and Anthony Shostak, the museum's education coordinator, provide a sense of the jacket's size.

The sculpture apparently has the power to stop Alumni Walk traffic, as biker Rusty Milholland '10 of Freeport pauses to take a good look.

Instead, the jacket initially came to the U.S. as part of , an exhibition by the Asia Society and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

From Sept. 7 through mid-November, the suit sat on the Park Avenue median at 70th Street.

According to Melissa Chiu, museum director at the Asia Society, “the iconic Mao jacket symbolizes Mao’s legacy and may be viewed as both nostalgic and critical, mirroring the views of the artist and many Chinese of his generation.”

Given the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art’s reputation for championing contemporary Chinese art (other recent major exhibitions include and From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium by Wenda Gu), Bessire says he “immediately” approached the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Committee on Public Art about bringing Mao Jacket to campus.

From that point, the sculpture’s path to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was guided by the College’s Public Art Policy (see page 7 for “temporary installations”).

Bessire hopes the work will “continue the conversation about Chinese history and the expanding influence of China and Chinese culture,” noting that Mao Jacket is an “extraordinary opportunity for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to have one of the iconic symbols of Chinese contemporary art by one of the most influential artists in the world today.”

The huge icon of Communist rule looked like some strange bell as it dangled in the air between Lane and Pettengill halls. “Surreal,” said Bessire.

The scuplture arrived early Wednesday morning on a flatbed trailer hauled by a Peterbilt tractor. In two stages, a 120-ton Grove all-terrain crane hoisted the piece from the parking lot behind Lane Hall up to Alumni Walk.

At one point, the huge icon of Communist rule looked like some strange bell as it dangled in the air between Lane and Pettengill halls against the vivid blue sky. “Surreal,” said Bessire.

The sculpture sits outside Pettengill Hall, across from Dana Chemistry.

Afterwards, Bessire relaxed on a bench next to the jacket and talked with people about the sculpture. “I got many responses,” he says. “Some loved it, some were confused and some did not like it. But everybody was certainly thinking about what is public art and what role it has on the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus.”

In the coming weeks, Bessire will offer a lecture about the sculpture and about public art at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

In a collaboration unusual for Maine’s academic museums, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, will jointly present an exhibition by Wenda Gu, one of the most important artists to emerge from China in recent decades.

From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium opens at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ on June 12 and at ICA, site of the opening reception for both institutions, on June 18. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ hosts the closing reception and a performance by Gu on Oct. 9.

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum is located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., and admission is open to the public at no cost. It is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and is closed Sundays and major holidays. For additional information about the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art call 207-786-6158. For call 207-879-5742.

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the Gu exhibition takes place in the museum’s Upper Gallery. In the Lower Gallery, also opening on June 12 are the shows New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography, which closes May 30, 2005, and Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity, which closes Dec. 18 of this year.

Gu was active in the Chinese avant-garde before emigrating to the United States in 1987. He mines tradition and pursues innovation in works that explore globalism, diasporic art and transculturalism to present an idealized unification of humanity.

“Wenda Gu’s work is timely in its ambitious attempt to address in artistic terms the issue of globalism that dominates discussions of contemporary economics, society and culture. The enormous scope of his vision — conceiving of his artwork as existing over time and space and not constrained by convention, language or national boundaries — is remarkable,” writes Mark H.C. Bessire in the exhibition publication, the first major scholarly publication on Gu (MIT Press).

Bessire, director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum and former director of ICA, edited the publication and, with counterparts at museums in Kansas and Texas, co-curated the exhibition. It consists of two site-specific installations, two other installations and a performance.

“Words, languages, human hair, glue, calligraphy and stone carving are just some of the components of his installations that catalyze discussion and broaden awareness among viewers,” Bessire writes.

At the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum, Gu will create an installation titled “united nations — 7561 kilometers,” the 20th piece in his “united nations” series. An ongoing worldwide project begun in 1992, the series consists of “monuments” made of human hair, collected from barbershops across the globe, that the artist presses or weaves into bricks, carpets and curtains. The blend of hair from different nations is a metaphor for the mixture of races that Gu predicts will eventually unite humanity into “a brave new racial identity.”

For “united nations — 7561 kilometers,” Gu will construct a “temple” using thin and colored human hair braids. The structure will large enough for viewers to pass through and under the piece. Members of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and local communities will be invited to participate in “united nations — we are united,” the artist’s performance in October.

Among his works at the ICA, Gu will present a second original installation, a new chapter in a series using stone steles marked with retranslated, rewritten Tang Dynasty poetry, as well as rubbings taken from the steles. Inventing and misusing words and language symbols in a variety of languages, Gu embraces mistakes and misunderstandings. He finds absurdity and unexpected beauty in the acceptance of illogical retranslations.

The project was supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In the museum’s Lower Gallery, New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography presents American, African and Chinese artists whose work transcends its local origins to achieve global relevance. The American photographers include Melonie Bennett, Tanja Hollander, Jocelyn Lee, Scott Peterman and Sa Schloff, all associated with the Bakery Photo Cooperative in Portland.

The Chinese photographers include the seven who showed work during the winter in the museum’s acclaimed exhibition, as well as exhibit curator Gu Zheng. (Here’s the Documenting China press release and here’s the museum’s description, with a slide show.) The breadth of contemporary African photography is represented by Samuel Fosso, Malick Sidibe, Jurgen Schadeberg, Bernie Searle (performance artist) and Sukhdeo Bobson Mohanlall.

Also in the Lower Gallery, Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity taps the museum’s collection of materials pertaining to Hartley. In fact, the museum was established as a repository for the collection of drawings, photographs and documents by or about this key 20th-century modernist, a Lewiston native. Evidence of Hartley’s efforts to establish his name and locate himself within the collective memory of the public, his friends and family turns up throughout the collection.

Hartley’s personal archive not only provides ample information about the artist’s life, relationships and interests, but demonstrates an attempt to construct both a personal history and a public identity. The collection includes a large number of photographs, both personal snapshots and formal portraits by George Platt Lynes and Alfredo Valente.

It’s evident that photography allowed Hartley to remake himself in any image he desired: New York modernist, European aesthete, native Mainer. Hartley’s ongoing struggle to find his place — geographically, psychologically, artistically and as a gay man — is documented in his writing, reflected in his work and revealed through a study of his archive.