Liberation

David Barr
2009; Granite; Sculpture
North Campus; Near the entrance to building B018 of the North Campus Research Complex, and scattered around ponds north and west of building B016

Acquired in 2009 when the university purchased the property from Pfizer. Commissioned by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and installed in 2002. The artwork is comprised of nine separate objects or groups of objects either near the main entrance to the primary building or scattered in the landscape. The artist said that “The forms of these sculptures and their relationships express their search, the research, the persistence, the power, and the evolution of the scientific process—a process used at Pfizer in the quest for remedies to relieve dysfunction and human suffering, for liberation from pain and disease.” The engravings on the three upright stones at the entrance refer to Parke-Davis’s production and calibration of quinine. The first is the cinchona plant, the second the chemical structure of quinine, and the third is a tablet. The inscription underneath the egg nearby is from the 13th-century Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi: “The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, it is hidden, and it is hidden.” On one of the other stones, located on the west side of the western pond, the chemical structure for Lipitor is revealed in an “imprisoned” hemisphere. (Lipitor was developed at the site.)