WTC sculpture: lost or destroyed? - Artworld - World Trade Center - Brief Article

Art in America, Sept, 2002 by Janet Koplos

Masayuki Nagare's large public sculpture Cloud Fortress (1975) survived the collapse of the World Trade Center but was lost in the rescue and recovery efforts. When a photograph of the smoking ruins appeared in New York magazine's Oct. 1, 2001, report on the attack, the black stone sculpture stood, intact, in the foreground.

It may have been precisely its position that was fatal: the sculpture was set at the Church Street entrance to the central plaza. According to sources at Jason McCoy Gallery, which represents Nagare [see review on p. 136], as well as Mark Wagner of Voorsanger Architects, who is involved in the archiving of art fragments recovered from the site, the sculpture was bulldozed and removed, probably within the first 24 hours, to allow heavy machinery to facilitate the rescues anticipated in those early hours. No trace of it has come to light at the landfill on Staten Island or elsewhere. The sculpture seems to have endured like a fortress and then vanished like a cloud.