Robert Tannen’s “Jackson Square”
Artist and urban planner Robert Tannen’s homage to a great American plaza
520 Royal Street
Tricentennial Wing
3rd Floor
Explore New Orleans’s famed Jackson Square without ever leaving the Historic New Orleans Collection. Jackson Square, a sculpture by New Orleans artist and urban planner Robert Tannen (b. 1937), comprises representations of all the structures surrounding the square—the Pontalba buildings, Cabildo, Presbytère, and St. Louis Cathedral—as well as the riverfront levee and the square’s statue of Andrew Jackson.
“I think of the sculpture as giving appropriate importance to that urban space,” Tannen said. “By abstracting the buildings, it’s a way to convey to someone looking at the space and understanding it as a special urban experience.”
The entire sculpture has a footprint of about 10-by-12 feet, and the tallest structure, St. Louis Cathedral, stands 5 feet tall. The long levee form serves as a representative and literal retaining wall, forming the fourth side of the titular square and reminding the viewer of the city’s deeply embedded relationship with the river and with water.
Rounding out the installation is a brief history of Jackson Square and its urban development over time, as well as interactive stations where visitors can share their responses to the work and create their own models of significant urban spaces.
About the Artist
Robert C. Tannen (b. 1937) was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Coney Island. He attended the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and studied industrial and environmental design and visual arts. After college, he taught at Pratt, Franconia College (New Hampshire), and the Tulane School of Architecture. His sixty-year career as a visual artist includes the founding of the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans with his wife, Jeanne P. Nathan, in 1976. He lives in New Orleans.
NOLA Life Stories Interview
In 2011 and 2012, HNOC curator Mark Cave interviewed Robert Tannen for NOLA Life Stories, an oral history initiative produced in collaboration with WWNO 89.9 FM. Follow the link below to hear a clip in which Tannen discusses his shotgun house sculptures. The full interview is available from HNOC’s online catalog.
Related Stories
Robert Tannen's Vision of Jackson Square as a Civic Monument
The artist's abstract sculpture honors a great American plaza.
From Soldiers’ Stomping Ground to Tourist Attraction
It’s one of the most famous plazas in the world, but Jackson Square had humble beginnings.
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