Our View

Opportunity to appreciate
work of famed local artist

Middlesex County will welcome home the work of one of its most acclaimed artists this weekend.

The work of the late South Brunswick resident and artist George Segal will be the focus of a four-month exhibit at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick. The exhibit is the subject of a story on page 20 of this week’s Sentinel.

The show, titled "George Segal: Sculpture, Paintings and Drawings from the Artists Studio," is a great opportunity to learn about and appreciate the work of a man who was well-known not only here in Central New Jersey. His pieces have inspired countless artists and touched many lives throughout the world.

Segal lived as we did. In fact, in 1998, a Washington Post writer put it this way: "George Segal, the man, reminds you of his sculptures. He’s as lumpily unchic as his plaster ghosts ... Segal has never had a $200 haircut, an estate in the Hamptons or a mirrored closet full of soft Italian shoes."

Perhaps it was his down-to-earth mind-set that enabled him to take ordinary moments of life and turn them into timeless classics encased in plaster. His work shows us the best of ourselves.

His noted "Depression Bread Line" and "Fireside Chat" sculptures captured moments in our history that define who we were, and who we are.

Segal was never constrained by just one form to express his talent. He used the brush and camera, as well as full-size plaster to immortalize life as he saw it.

Though his works are viewed by countless people every day in museums, the downtown areas of major cities and in places such as the Port Authority in New York and the FDR Memorial in Washington, D.C., he was truly a treasure in the Garden State.

The exhibit, which will open Sunday, marks a kind of homecoming of the artist’s work, and is an excellent chance for us to experience this man once again.