Ohio State campus now home to famous Lichtenstein sculpture

COLUMBUS, OH (WCMH)– The Ohio State University is now home to a prestigious piece of modern art donated by a celebrated OSU alumus.

Roy Lichtenstein’s Modern Head now sits in the middle of academic campus between 18th and 19th Avenues by Smith and McPherson laboratories.

The stainless steel pop art sculpture is a massive 31 feet tall.

Before teaching at Ohio State, Lichtenstein earned both his bachelors and masters degrees at the university in the late 1940s.

The university says “modern head” is already becoming rooted in campus life.

“I understand that the students on campus have already given him a nickname, which is ‘WiFi guy’ because of the concentric arcs that comprise the eye,” explained professor and chair of the Department of Art History at Ohio State Lisa Florman.

The piece is one of just five Modern Head sculptures throughout the world. The others are located at Yale University, Matsumoto Dental University in Japan, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

According to the Smithsonian the sculpture that is now on their grounds was in Battery Park in downtown Manhattan just one block from the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks.

It sustained no serious damage when the towers fell and was temporarily used by the FBI as a message board during its investigations of ground zero until it was removed in November 2001.