Scott Hocking sculpture headed for Detroit’s Huntington Place

A floating sphere will soon be appearing outside of Detroit’s Huntington Place (aka the former TCF Center, aka the former Cobo Center). No, it’s not a UFO — it’s a new sculpture by metro Detroit-based artist Scott Hocking.

The Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority Art Foundation unveiled plans for the 11-foot diameter sculpture, “Floating Citadel,” on Wednesday. The piece is expected to be completed by late summer and will be located in the main circle drive of downtown Detroit’s Huntington Place at the corner of Washington and Jefferson.

Hocking’s piece will join renowned artists like Hubert Massey, Gilda Snowden, Robert Sestok, Tyree Guyton, and others featured in Huntington Place’s public art collection.

“We are thrilled to reveal Scott Hocking as the artist for this stunning civic sculpture, which will welcome our community and visitors to the world-class Huntington Place Convention Center,” Lisa Canada, DRCFA Board Chair and DRCFA Art Foundation Chair, said in a statement. “The sculpture, ‘Floating Citadel’ is a beautiful piece which will join our other significant artworks at the convention center as we continue to expand our free public art collection.”

“Floating Citadel” is a visual nod to celestial bodies, astrolabes, cages, drains, and human skeletons, specifically the rib cage which protects life, but also traps us on the earthly plane. It’s meant to represent a global, terrestrial object, and an ascending spiritual form.

The bronze globe harks back to the thousands of years of mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and the copper and iron ore that traveled down the Great Lakes to Detroit. It also pays tribute to ancient Native shorelines, the Savoyard Creek, and the original Detroit River edge. The name is a reference to the original walled Village boundaries and its defense core, “the Citadel” which was located where the sculpture will stand.

"From our first meetings just prior to the COVID quarantine, to applying the final patina to the bronze, I’m excited to install this work — it’s been a long time coming,” Hocking said in a statement. “The whole team at Huntington Place has been great, and I was thrilled that my proposal was chosen. To have a large-scale sculpture in Detroit’s Civic Center, joining the likes of [Isamu] Noguchi, [Robert] Graham, [Marshall] Fredericks, [David] Barr, and [Sergio] De Giusti — and to have it located in front of the place that I’ve gone to since I was just a kid at the Auto Show — it’s a real honor."

Hocking’s work has been exhibited both locally and internationally at the Van Abbemuseum, the Kunst-Werke Institute, Kunsthalle Wien, Detroit Institute of Arts, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. He’s also a 2011 Kresge Artist Fellow and 2015 Knight Foundation Arts Challenge winner.

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