Giant bear sculpture at Brown University has its friends,

Giant bear sculpture at Brown University has its friends, foes

PROVIDENCE — On an Ivy League campus with plenty of bears reminding Brunonians and visitors of the college's mascot, a contemporary teddy bear sculpture has garnered attention recently — and mixed reviews.

Urs Fischer's baby-blue sculpture, "Untitled (Lamp/Bear)," is on loan from the collection of Steven and Alexandra Cohen. The Swiss artist's work is being installed in a typically quiet quad named for former President Ruth Simmons. The university will keep it five years, as Brown will do with another contemporary sculpture, also installed this summer, in the next quad over, said Jo-Ann Conklin, director of Brown's David Winton Bell Gallery and a member of Brown's public art committee.

That bronze-tree sculpture, "Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone)," by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, blends in, at first, among the elms on the Main Green, but its large boulder — taken from a river near the artist's hometown and nestled among its branches — defies a visitor's first impression that it's a real tree. That sculpture is also on loan, from the art collection of a Brown alum who wished to remain anonymous.

For the bear, there's no blending in.

It's one of Fischer's three oversized bear statues. A similar yellow sculpture is at the airport in Doha, Qatar, sold by auction house Christie's for $6.8 million to a member of the Qatari royal family. Hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen, whose daughter graduated from Brown this spring, owns the only light-blue version of the bear and lamp sculpture, Conklin said.

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