New York sculpture offers a public monument to motherhood

Mothers have long served as muses to artists through the ages, even as most acts of nurturing and caregiving often go unseen and unrequited.

That tension is the inspiration for a towering new bronze sculpture erected in New York’s Prospect Park.

Part of artist Molly Gochman’s Monuments to Motherhood series, the twisting, intertwining lines of the installation are meant to evoke an embrace, Gochman said, while the use of bronze is supposed to call to mind memorials for people whose lives were lost in battle or another conflict.

The work serves to “express the structure and persistence of caregiving and motherhood — the continuous, often unrecognized actions that uphold our daily lives,” Gochman told Hyperallergic.