Omaha, Neb – An 82-foot lighted glass tower designed by Omaha artist Jun Kaneko will be constructed in front of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center on the campus of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and its clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine.
The tower, which is made possible with a gift from an anonymous donor, is expected to be completed by next spring when the cancer center is expected to open. The tower itself is actually 75-feet high, but its 7-foot base brings it to 82-feet.
The project was announced today at a news conference hosted in a gallery space provided by KANEKO in downtown Omaha.
Kaneko is calling the tower "Search." He began working on it in January. It will be located at the corner of 45th Street and Dewey Avenue.
The corner will be reconfigured to include a roundabout. The glass tower will be located in the middle of the roundabout. It will be placed on a pedestal made of black and white granite and surrounded by black and grey pavers in radiating concentric rings in the 36-foot wide roundabout around the tower and 16-foot wide truck skirt lane.
"It’s a beautiful site. It fits perfectly," said Kaneko, who has done art projects around the world. "The cancer center is like a huge creative center. To be next to that kind of building, it’s an honor. I really appreciate this opportunity. It’s going to be in my hometown. I can’t wait to see the piece up."
UNMC and Nebraska Medicine are thrilled to have Kaneko doing the project, said UNMC Chancellor Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D.
"We are really fortunate to have an iconic representative of the Omaha community doing a major art feature for the medical center," said Dr. Gold, who also chairs the Nebraska Medicine advisory board. "The glass tower will be widely appreciated by our students, faculty and staff as well as the whole community. It will be a beacon of light that will spread far and wide from our campus."
Kenneth Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, said, "It will be a cornerstone of the cancer center – a guiding light for patients. It ties in perfectly into the importance of art and healing."
He noted that the tower will provide "a spectacular doorstep to the medical center" and will be visible for several blocks to the north on Saddle Creek Road as well as from the south and west.
"This is all about the intersection of art and medicine," said Jim Linder, M.D., chair of the Creative Board for KANEKO and former interim president for the University of Nebraska. "The pattern in the tower matches what we see in the laboratory. It is very similar to the fundamental structure of DNA and bears a close resemblance to what is seen with normal and abnormal chromosomes. It will serve as a great landmark for the cancer center."
Gail Walling Yanney, M.D., a committee member of the Healing Arts Program at the Buffett Cancer Center, had high praise for Kaneko. "He’s a true gem in our community," she said. "He’s a local artist who has international renown."
The Search Tower is part of a series of art projects associated with the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center through the Healing Arts Program and the One Percent for Art Program, in which 1 percent of the cost of building is set aside for art.
Other major art projects include:
- The Chihuly Sanctuary by Dale Chihuly, one of the world’s foremost artists working in glass.
- Leslie’s Healing Garden, an outdoor, year-round garden made possible with a gift by Marshall and Mona Faith of Omaha. The Faiths’ daughter, Leslie, died of cancer more than 60 years ago.
- A metal curtain wall on the outside of the building by Rob Ley of Los Angeles. Light and color will reflect off the metal curves.
- A large-scale painting for the cancer center lobby by Suzy Taekyung Kim of Brooklyn, N.Y. The painting will feature eight customized wood panels.
Dr. Walling Yanney said it’s anticipated that hundreds more original works of art will eventually round out the program – all designed to provide patients, staff and visitors with inspiration, comfort and calm, while also creating an atmosphere that feels distinctly different from the traditional hospital setting.
The Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center – a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center – is a collaboration of Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb. The new cancer center will open in early 2017 with cancer research at the Suzanne and Walter Scott Cancer Research Tower and clinical treatments at the C.L. Werner Cancer Hospital.
Fact sheet on Search Tower
- 75-foot high glass tower
- 1,800 square feet of glass
- 40,920 lbs. of glass
- 24-foot circumference
- 7-foot high pedestal
- Hand cut and ground, hand blown stained glass with color and opaque flash laminated onto 120 carrier safety glass panels.
- 120 glass panels, each 90 inches high by 24 inches wide (15 square feet each)
- Each panel weighs 341 lbs.
- Two layers of 5/16-inch-thick, fully tempered, heat-soaked, low-iron glass with opaque PVB film interlayer.
- Roundabout will feature locally sourced black and grey pavers in radiating concentric rings.
- Jun Kaneko has worked with a variety of glass techniques creating artwork for more than 40 years. This is the third project he has created using this technique.
- Glass is chemically the same as a glaze except light passes though it adding another dimension to the piece.
- Kaneko wants to create a positive piece that has a universal impact on all of the people who work at the medical center as care givers, researchers, doctors and nurses and the patients and families who come to the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center for treatment.
- The tower is being fabricated by master glass artisans in Germany.
- The tower will be lit at night by interior LED diodes.
- The Hope Tower – on the east end of campus (near 40th Street and Dewey Avenue) – is 120 feet high. It was created by James Carpenter, an internationally recognized artist from New York. Omaha philanthropists Ruth and Bill Scott made the lead donation on the Hope Tower.
NOTE TO MEDIA – Images of Search Tower can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xtl8p22r9o9fe9i/AAAX63GR2v2SAFTCALC8bjUaa?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zjj7pp360lv4jmt/AAB_LMYmftkj3w0bWoFV7xWla?dl=0
Video from the announcement event can be downloaded here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mspdtv0c6bruvo8/KANEKO%20Newser.mp4?dl=0
Bio sketch – Jun Kaneko
Jun Kaneko was born in Nagoya, Japan in 1942. He studied painting with Satoshi Ogawa during his adolescence – working in his studio during the day and attending high school in the evening.
He came to the United States in 1963 to continue his studies at Chouinard Institute of Art when his introduction to Fred Marer drew him to sculptural ceramics. He proceeded to study with Peter Voulkos, Paul Soldner, and Jerry Rothman in California during the time now defined as The Contemporary Ceramics Movement in America.
The following decade, Kaneko taught at some of the nation’s leading art schools, including Scripps College, Rhode Island School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Based in Omaha since 1986, Kaneko has worked at several experimental studios including European Ceramic Work Center in The Netherlands, Otsuka Omi Ceramic Company in Japan, Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia, Bullseye Glass in Portland, Ore., Acadia Summer Arts Program in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Aguacate in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Over the course of his career he has partnered with industrial facilities to realize large-scale, hand-built sculptures. The first was his 1982-1983 Omaha Project at Omaha Brickworks. Later series of sculptures were created at Mission Clay Products at his Fremont Project, completed in 1992-1994 in California, and his Pittsburg Project completed in 2004-2007 in Kansas.
In 2013, his exhibition Myths, Legends and Truths opened at Millennium Park in Chicago featuring 13, 9½-foot-tall Dangos from the Pittsburg Project series and 23 of his Tanuki, a new body of work by Kaneko drawing upon Japanese folklore.
His artwork appears in numerous international and national solo and group exhibitions annually and is included in more than 70 museum collections. Kaneko holds honorary doctorates from the University of Nebraska, the Massachusetts College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art in London and is the recipient of national, state and organization honors and fellowships.
Kaneko is increasingly drawn to installations that promote civic interaction. He has completed more than 50 public art commissions, including:
- Current, his two 350-foot long murals at Aquarium Station in Boston (1993-2000);
- Shift, a 5-story mural in the Biology and Physics Building at The University of Connecticut (1997);
- Mashima Sports Arena Mural in Osaka, Japan (1994);
- Permanent plaza installations, Rhythm, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Water Plaza, at the Bartle Hall Convention Center in Kansas City, Kan. (2006);
- Five Dangos (2007) with glass mural, Expansion (2013) in Des Moines, Iowa;
- Conversation at the International Finance Center in Shanghai, China (2012);
- Ascent at Tower Square, featuring a 56-foot tall Glass Tower, Plaza Design, and Tile Wall in Lincoln, Neb. (2014); and
- Garden of Tanuki, a dozen Tanuki sculptures, at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo (2014).
Kaneko designed the sets and costumes for three operas: Puccini’s Madame Butterfly (2006), Beethoven’s Fidelio (2008), and Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2012). All three are currently touring in the United States. Opera Omaha recently staged Fidelio in April 2015. The San Francisco Opera will present Madame Butterfly for the second time in November 2016, and the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. will present Madame Butterfly in May 2017.
Kaneko and his wife, Ree, formed KANEKO, a public non-profit cultural organization exploring and encouraging the process of creativity and headquartered in three turn-of- the-century warehouses in the Old Market District of Omaha, Neb.
KANEKO is an institution with a vision to celebrate creativity and is committed to fostering it as the overriding mission with four major programming themes: Design, Ideas, Performance, and Innovation.