Pivotal sculpture for N.C. exhibit found in N.Y. garage

By Martha Waggoner

RALEIGH, N.C. — Michael Richards’ life came to a sudden, violent end in his World Trade Center studio. For a time, it looked as though the terrorists who killed the artist had destroyed one of his most important works as well.
Organizers of an art exhibit to mark the centennial of man’s first powered flight tried fruitlessly for nearly two years to locate the Jamaican-born sculptor’s ‘‘Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian,’’ which they felt was pivotal to the collection.
It was only when they had given up hope, shortly before the exhibition opened this fall, that a relative’s apologetic phone call laid the mystery to rest and gave the North Carolina Museum of Art its centerpiece.
‘‘I was stunned because the show was opening in two weeks. I just assumed we’d never get it,’’ curator Linda Johnson Dougherty said. ‘‘I was quite elated we were going to have the possibility of showing it.’’
On Wednesday, ‘‘Tar Baby vs. St. Sebastian’’ joins Richards’ ‘‘Winged’’ and 90 other flight-inspired artworks in ‘‘Defying Gravity: Contemporary Art and Flight.’’ The show, which opened in October and continues through March 7, is the art museum’s tribute to the Wright brothers’ first flight Dec. 17, 1903, near Kitty Hawk.
Richards, 37, had a studio on the 92nd floor of the trade center’s Tower One and spent the night of Sept. 10, 2001, there. He died in the next morning’s terrorist attacks.
‘‘Tar Baby’’ was a seminal piece for Richards, according to his dealer, Genaro Ambrosino. His death meant that the piece would be his best remembered ‘‘for the creepiest reason that you can think of,’’ said Ambrosino, director of the Ambrosino Gallery in Miami.
The sculpture was a body cast of the artist, the figure pierced with airplanes, a parachute on its back. The eyes are closed, face pointed heavenward, arms at the side of the body with palms outstretched.
It was one of several pieces that Richards did in tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first black military pilots who served in the Air Force in World War II.
The museum had its eye on the piece as early as the summer of 2001 as plans for the exhibit were first laid. Organizers began writing to the lawyer for Richards’ estate the following winter, seeking permission to use the sculpture.
But his distraught family didn’t respond. As months passed, many assumed ‘‘Tar Baby’’ was lost.
This fall, a cousin, Dawn Dale, who had seen one of the museum’s letters, found it again.
‘‘I had looked at it and meant to respond, but I didn’t,’’ said Dale, who works as a nurse in Wingdale, N.Y. ‘‘Then I ran across it one day and said, ’Let me give you a call.’’’
It turned out that the sculpture was stored in another cousin’s garage in Mount Vernon, N.Y. It was retrieved and shipped to the museum in a custom-built crate. <-->