"In 1982, Seward Johnson completed work on what would become one of his most renowned sculptures. Double Check is the life-size bronze of a businessman sitting on a bench as he sifts through his briefcase, seeming to make final preparations for an upcoming business meeting in a nearby office building. Shortly after it was completed, the work was installed in Liberty Plaza Park, in lower Manhattan. The sculpture soon became a fixture in the downtown landscape and, for nearly twenty years, a symbol in honor of the thousands of people who worked every day in New York City's financial district."
"On September 11, 2001, the associations that millions of people made with Double Check day after day changed dramatically. As the New York Times wrote about Double Check in the aftermath of the catastrophe: With everything in ruins, one figure remained in Liberty Plaza Park across the street from the World Trade Center. He was sitting hunched over, staring in his briefcase, a businessman who seemed to be in shock and despair. Rescue workers, it was reported, approached him in the chaos to offer assistance, only to discover that he was not a man at all, but a sculpture. Afterward, this sculpture became an icon, as newspaper and magazine photos showed it covered in ash and, later, by flowers, notes, and candles left there by mourners and rescue workers. Double Check was a memorial to all those who perished -- The New York Times, January 16, 2004."
This is how the statue is represented in the exhibit at Grounds for Sculpture.
And now there is another sculpture, called Makeshift Memorial. Seward photographed the items that had been placed by Double Check after 9/11 and reproduced them in bronze and welded them onto a casting of the original sculpture. The new work is installed on New Jersey's Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, which overlooks lower Manhattan and the former site of the World Trade Center.
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