“The site is totally different from the National Geographic headquarters. The sculpture needed to be reconfigured for the new space. “It’s not at all the same as National Geographic. “It seemed to be a great location,” Zimmerman says. Zimmerman and representatives from the Society visited several potential sites, including other universities, and ultimately chose the ellipse at American University. Zimmerman worked with National Geographic Society to find the sculpture a new home. In 2019, the National Geographic Society announced major renovation plans for its headquarters, including for the plaza that originally housed Marabar. "Sudama." Photo by Dylan Singleton A New Home at AU From its completion in 1984, the work remained an iconic fixture in front of the National Geographic Society’s headquarters.
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“The Marabar Caves, with their rough natural exteriors and highly polished interiors, became my solution to the project-not as caves but as massive rough granite rocks with one, sometimes two, mirror-polished sides-to look as if a gigantic geode had been cracked open to straddle the 60-foot-long pool of water,” Zimmerman says. Forster’s novel A Passage to India (1924), where Forster describes the fictional Marabar Caves based on the real, ancient Barabar Caves in the Bihar state in northeast India. She found inspiration in the temples and caves of India following travel there in the 1970s, and in reading E. “The one caveat from the client was that the plaza design was to feature rocks and water,” she says. When Marabar was commissioned, Zimmerman was given the freedom to be creative with the design. Women artists just didn’t get commissions like this at that time.”Īfter earning her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1974, Zimmerman shifted from a focus on painting and photography to the large-scale installations she is best known for. “This was a major, ambitious installation. Rasmussen noted the work’s prominent place in the history of landscape sculpture. It was Zimmerman’s first major sculptural commission. The work, then titled Marabar, was originally commissioned for the plaza outside the National Geographic Society’s downtown headquarters in 1981. Sudama’s reveal on AU’s campus completes a journey that began in downtown Washington, DC. “You see yourself, your surroundings, see the water, the smooth, polished stone, in that very special space.” “A reflective space-literally and figuratively,” says Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. Sudama creates an on-campus oasis among the trees and grass.
Zimmerman's tranquil installation will provide students, faculty, staff, visitors, and the broader DC community with a truly peaceful and contemplative space that’s open to all," says Linda Aldoory, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Art is at the very heart of AU's engagement with the local community.
“Art has the power to connect, and with the acquisition of Sudama, AU is enhancing its role as a convening arts institution in DC. The National Geographic Society gifted Sudama to AU and is funding all aspects of the complex installation.
These elements comprise Sudama, a monumental sculptural installation by American artist Elyn Zimmerman. This month, the gates were removed to reveal the transformation-five enormous granite boulders and smaller accent rocks weighing more than 450,000 pounds total, which surround a crescent-shaped pool of running water. Since September, it’s been impossible to miss the construction in the ellipse behind American University’s Kay Spiritual Life Center.
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