CSULB Installs Nancy Graves' "Sequi"

Nancy Graves, Sequi, 1984.

Nancy Graves' Sequi was commissioned for Crocker (now Wells Fargo) Center under a city-mandated public art program. It was part of a blue chip collection that included pieces by Jean Dubuffet, Miró, Louise Nevelson, and Robert Graves. In recent years the collection has been disbanded, with the Dubuffet and Miró going to the auction block. But the Graves was donated to Cal State University Long Beach's Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum last year. It has now been installed outdoors near CSULB's College of Professional and Continuing Education. 

Sequi was made from scaled-up molds of botanical specimens and colored with paints development for NASA spacecraft. Graves was at the height of her reputation in the 1980s, and she considered Sequi—familiar to downtown office workers but not to a broader art audience—to be one of her most important works.  

CSULB's collection of outdoor sculpture and murals has works by Claire Falkenstein, Maren Hassinger, Robert Irwin, Terry Schoonhoven, and Millard Sheets.