Oskar J. W. Hansen’s Most Famous Missing Statue, “Wings,” Last Seen in Richmond

Oskar J. W. Hansen is mostly known for his prominent public monument sculpture: his many works at Hoover Dam, his Yorktown Victory Monument, and his busts for the Wright Brothers Memorial at Kitty Hawk.

Oskar’s Golden Wings for the Rand Tower in 1929

His most famous privately-owned sculpture, Wings, has been prominently displayed in the lobby of Rand Tower in downtown Minneapolis since famed aviator and businessman Rufus Rand commissioned the artwork and opened the building in 1929.

That Wings statue is a 7ft tall, golden-toned bronze figure with winged arms spread wide and pointed up and down. The figure’s face, musculature, and arching pointed wings are connected to the shapes, symbols, and story Oskar would tell with his famed Winged Figures of the Republic statues at Hoover Dam almost a decade later.

This motif—combining his fascination and connection to the burgeoning aviation age and Oskar’s mystical interest in the symbology of angelic winged beings—Oskar repeated in several works, including his 1930 Olympiad of the Air medal, his 1929 Kneeling Winged Figure wedding gift to the crown prince of Norway, and his vertically-oriented Tree of Life sculpture.

Oskar’s Rand Tower Wings remains on public view even after a series of building ownership changes over the last century.

Wings at Rand Tower in downtown Minneapolis. (Courtesy of Aaron Street).

Oskar Creates a Second Silver Wings Statue

Less known is that Oskar created a silver-toned twin to the Rand Tower Wings sculpture.

I haven’t yet been able to determine if Oskar created this second silver Wings (for clarity, I’ll call this “Wings II” to distinguish it from the gold-toned Rand Tower original) with a buyer in mind or whether he funded its creation, hoping to sell it later, but at the depths of the Great Depression it found no buyer, and Oskar kept it for his personal collection.

Oskar J. W. Hansen with Wings II in his Chicago studio around 1929. (From the This Old Palette blog).

Wings II Becomes a Lightning Rod

Following Oskar’s commission for his artwork at Hoover Dam, he purchased a 350-acre mountaintop property outside of Charlottesville, Virginia—Pantops Mountain—that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, part of a vast estate Jefferson inherited from his father that initially also included the Monticello plantation.

Oskar spent his final three decades designing and building an ever-evolving home and art workshop—Pantops Studio—near the top of the mountain. The home included a tropical greenhouse, where Oskar grew bananas, a series of indoor ponds and fountains, where Oskar grew lotuses, and a bridge connecting the house to the art studio, supported by sculpted pillars evoking ancient Greek caryatids.

Visitors to Pantops during Oskar’s lifetime remember driving up the mountain road until the tree canopy finally opened up, and the first thing one saw was Oskar’s shining silver Wings II statue mounted on the roof of the house.

Its placement as a lightning rod on the roof of Pantops simultaneously served a crucial practical function while also welcoming guests to his unique property in an awe-inspiring way.

Wings II on the roof of the home at Pantops Studio around 1945. (Courtesy of Alex Hansen).

The Destruction of Pantops

In 1963, after years of largely self-inflicted boom-and-bust financial mismanagement, Oskar was forced to file for bankruptcy.

To resolve this financial crisis, Oskar made a complex arrangement with a real estate investor that would allow him to stay at Pantops through the end of his life, but then his family would be forced to vacate, and Pantops would transfer to the investor.

I’ll tell more of the bankruptcy story some other time; it’s a fascinating tale of missing Smithsonian Museum gemstone treasures, the Holy Grail, and a U. S. Supreme Court case of a man arrested for stealing from a convent of nuns (really).

As a result of Oskar’s complex bankruptcy arrangement, when he died in 1971, his widow Hope Hansen was immediately evicted with their personal possessions and Oskar’s artwork—including the rooftop Wings II.

Because of the complicated story of Oskar’s bankruptcy—the real estate investor who’d bought Pantops was now in prison and had himself declared bankruptcy—there was a lack of clarity on who owned Pantops after Oskar’s death, and the property was abandoned. Over the coming years, it would be ransacked by a series of squatters, including homeless artists and a motorcycle gang. By the late 1970s, Oskar’s Pantops home was effectively destroyed.

Wings II Loaned to Richmond Byrd Airport

Oskar’s will and estate took years after his 1971 death to resolve, but by 1977, Hope had the court declare that she should inherit all of Oskar’s assets, which was mainly his personal art collection.

As soon as Hope had Oskar’s probate resolved, she and the estate administrator arranged to loan Wings II to Byrd Airport in Richmond, where it was placed in the window of the main terminal lobby. Reporting from the time indicates that Hope lent it to the airport to regenerate interest in the work, hoping that public prominence for it would improve the market for her to sell it for a higher price then.

A 1977 newspaper article even mentions that Hope claimed to have a potential buyer willing to pay $100,000 for the statue. I doubt this is true, or I suspect she would have accepted the offer.

Essentially, the airport loan was meant to be a profitable marketing effort for her. Because she anticipated a medium-term financial windfall from the statue, she took out a small loan from Sovran Bank for a few thousand dollars to fund the transportation and installation of the statue from Charlottesville to the Richmond airport.

1977 Richmond Times Dispatch photo of Wings II being installed at Richmond Byrd Airport. (Photo by Bill Lane for the Richmond Times Dispatch).

Despite its prominent placement in the airport, no buyer was found in the coming years, and Hope’s financial prospects were dim, but she continued to make small monthly payments on the Sovran Bank loan in the hopes that Wings II would one day pay off.

But in October 1983, Hope died of cancer.

Immediately after her death, her monthly payments to Sovran Bank ceased.

By early 1984, the small loan was 90 days overdue, and Sovran Bank began collection efforts for its delinquent loan. Importantly, at the time of the 1977 loan, Hope had agreed that the statue would serve as the loan’s collateral.

Sovran Bank approached the airport in February 1984, requesting that the airport find a way to pay off the remaining loan balance; otherwise, the Bank would be forced to take the statue as collateral.

Janitors Launch “Save Our Wings” Campaign

Two airport maintenance workers, George Davis and Thomas Ingram—who had spent years cleaning and maintaining the statue—heard about the bank’s threat to take Oskar’s statue and launched a PR campaign to “Save Our Wings” (I’ve modeled my current “Save the Star Map” campaign after their efforts).

The “Save Our Wings” campaign received prominent media coverage in Richmond. Within a few weeks, an anonymous Richmond-area art collector came forward and paid off the Sovran Bank loan so Wings II could remain on display at the airport.

I tracked down the Sovran Bank banker in charge of the collections effort 40 years ago, and he said that the anonymous donor was so careful about making the payment anonymously that even he never learned who it was. I also tracked down the bank’s lawyer from that time. He remembers handling the legal work of the collections effort but doesn’t remember if he ever learned the anonymous donor’s identity.

Wings II in Anonymous Donor’s Richmond Living Room

In 2005, Richmond Airport began a complete renovation of the terminal and decided that Oskar’s Wings II statue would not be part of its new terminal design.

The airport contacted the anonymous donor from 1984, who had legally bought out Sovran Bank’s ownership of the statue, and arranged for him to claim it. I’ve connected with current airport staff who say they no longer have any records related to the statue.

Six years later, in 2011, the anonymous donor contacted a blogger, Chris Miller, who had been writing about Oskar Hansen. He told the blogger about how he had obtained Wings II from the airport, including a few photos of the statue in his Richmond living room.

2011 photo of Wings II in an anonymous Richmond living room. (Courtesy of Chris Miller’s This Old Palette blog).

I reached out to Chris to see if he could help identify the anonymous donor, but 12 years later, he had no remaining record of the person’s identity.

I’m still trying to figure out who the anonymous 1984 donor is and what has happened to Wings II since those 2011 living room photos.

I assume that an art collector in a position to make an anonymous donation back in 1984 was likely already at least a middle-aged adult at the time, and so, 40 years later, he would now be in at least his mid-80s, if not older.

It’s been over a decade since the current owner contacted Chris’ blog and shared his living room photos. I’m hopeful someone with connections to the Richmond art collecting world will be able to help identify who the donor was and help locate Wings II again.