Care for Covenant: Restoring Liberman’s Sculpture

“…I like opera because it has the exacerbated cries of anguish that most of the time are not allowed in human life… I think many works of art are screams, and I identify with screams.” -Alexander Liberman in an interview with Marshall Blonsky, Bomb Magazine 1986

One of the most recognized artworks on Penn’s campus, Alexander Liberman’s Covenant has been going under restoration this summer, but the two-phase process has been underway for more than a year. The piece was first installed at 39th Street and Locust Walk in 1975 and dedicated in November 1976. Its name, placement, and immense presence (it is roughly 50 feet tall) convey conflicting ideas that have stirred conversation on campus for over 50 years. Commissioned for the Superblock, the high-rise student housing complex that in the 1960s displaced a residential neighborhood, the bright red asymmetrical and industrial sculpture fulfilled the city’s “Percent for Art” legislation. This ordinance requires that a proportion of any city-assisted construction budget be dedicated to public art. Although Liberman discussed his large-scale sculptures as grappling with ideas of awe and the sublime, at the time of Covenant’s dedication, the name signaled to its critics a conspiracy on the part of the university to acquire West Philly land without consideration of existing communities—placing it squarely in the center of a discussion around gentrification that has not ended.

In the past half-century, the sculpture has welded itself into its surroundings as a constant—alternately passageway and meeting place. Casey Boss, Associate Vice Provost for Planning, Design, and Construction, who has been involved in the restoration project, puts it this way: “I’ve always thought of it as a transition, a threshold to campus.” Boss credits her love of art to her high school teacher Betsy Hoefen, and her study of architecture to a Lego competition that won her a scholarship to Syracuse University. For her, it is the both the scale of the work and its materials that define Covenant: “The metal structure and the steel detail as it connects to the concrete base—it’s incredible to think about an artist executing that—and other things that artists don’t necessarily have to consider, but are present in construction.” Because of the size of the sculpture, the restoration requires the aid of structural engineers and a painting company that primarily works on large-scale structures such as bridges.

Boss described the unusual process of entering the sculpture to assess it: “We dug a hole to find the access tunnel, went through the tunnel into the concrete base, and were able to pop up in the center of one of the tubes—and just to give a sense of the scale—I think one of them we measured was the size of a bathroom.” This summer, when the scaffolding went up, water damage was visible at the joints. Because the base was completely dry last summer, the engineers theorized that the damage was the result of condensation. Lynn Smith Dolby, Director of The Penn Art Collection, commented on how the water complicates the restoration: “The structural engineers have hypothesized that perhaps 50 years of condensation has gathered in these dammed areas. So we’ve been working with the Liberman foundation and with Heritage Conservation Collective and their lead conservator on the project (David Facenda, MSHP ’02) to talk about what would it look like if we put weep holes into the sculpture.”

The work that it takes to upkeep public art is not necessarily the first thing people think of when they interact with it. Often, monumental works like Covenant evoke a peremptory thumbs-up/thumbs-down reaction. The Daily Pennsylvanian initially reported some comparing it to giant ketchup bottles and nuclear reactors. One nickname with staying power has been “Dueling Tampons,” mentioned in actress and Penn alum Elizabeth Banks’ 2025 commencement speech.

Artist Alexander Liberman, born in Kyiv in 1912 (d. 1999), may not have minded the ambivalence his work still faces—even decades after it first became an undeniable feature of the Penn experience. A Jewish immigrant and Russian-American magazine editor, publisher, painter, photographer, and sculptor, Liberman displayed a wide-ranging curiosity evident in his varied career. In 1986, he described his expansive approach to meaning-making in terms of spirituality and rebellion: “I think we go back to this feeling of awe and an arresting presence that makes people stop, pause, hesitate, feel, think… It’s tradition and at the same time a revolt against it that still governs my creative thinking.”

Abstraction invites interpretation, and the sheer size of Covenant and the way its red, in Liberman’s words, “stands out against the gray of cities” positions the largest piece of sculpture on Penn’s campus as an enduring query. What do we make of what we confront each day? This is a question worth grappling with—in 1976, in 2026, and tomorrow.