Richard Serra

Serra is here as the most famous cautionary tale. Tilted Arc, a 37-metre curved wall of weathering steel installed across Federal Plaza in Manhattan in 1981, was meant to make office workers feel the space anew; many said it simply blocked their way and their lunch spot. After public hearings it was cut up and removed in 1989, and the case still shapes how cities commission art. His later walk-through spirals and ellipses, such as The Matter of Time at the Guggenheim Bilbao, show what the same steel can do when people choose to enter.