Statue of Harrison Gray Otis

Statue of Harrison Gray Otis
Statue of Harrison Gray Otis
	Otis group (2008)
Artist	Paul Troubetzkoy
Year	1918
Medium	Bronze
Location	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
	34°3′34″N 118°16′44.9″W / 34.05944°N 118.279139°W

A statue of Harrison Gray Otis (sometimes called General Harrison Gray Otis)^[1] is installed in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park, in the U.S. state of California.^[2]^[3] The bronze statue was originally part of a sculptural group (sometimes called the "Otis Group")^[4] that originally included a newsboy and a soldier.^[5]^[6] The artist, Paul Troubetzkoy, won a design competition in 1918 and the final product was installed in 1920.^[5] The soldier has been absent for decades, the newsboy was stolen for its scrap metal value in March 2024.^[5] The theft was discovered by Anne-Lise Desmas, an art historian and Getty Museum curator who brought a colleague from the Louvre to the park to see Troubetzkoy's work and found the newsboy absent.^[5] Investigators believe that the metal thieves posed as city maintenance workers to avoid questions about what they were doing with the cast-bronze figure.^[5]

The model for the newsboy was Andrew Azzoni, whose father worked as a waiter at a restaurant patronized by Troubetzkoy.^[5]

A scene from the Buster Keaton film Hard Luck was shot at the statue in 1921, at which time all three figures were still present.^[7]

The statue, standing in close proximity to Wilshire Boulevard, has been the victim of several car crashes.^[5]

Gallery

General Harrison Grey Otis statue at MacArthur Park, complete with "doughboy" and newsboy; likely photographed in the 1930s (Los Angeles Public Library WPA 6012)
Buster Keaton's character in Hard Luck (1921) outwits pursuing lawmen by disguising himself as one of the Otis group figures in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles

References

^ "General Harrison Gray Otis, (sculpture)". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
^ "General Harrison Gray Otis Statue". Los Angeles Explorers Guild. February 3, 2022. Archived from the original on September 19, 2022. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
^ Lopez, Robert J. (May 11, 2009). "CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on September 19, 2022. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
^ "Paul Troubetskoy (or Troubetzkoy), Otis Group, Macarthur Park, Los Angeles". Public Art in LA. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Curwen, Thomas (April 12, 2024). "Copper thieves strike again, mutilating a 100-year-old monument in MacArthur Park". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on April 12, 2024. Retrieved April 12, 2024.
^ Waldie, D. J. (March 22, 2016). "The Newsboy, the General, and the Lost Soldier of MacArthur Park". KCET. Archived from the original on November 11, 2021. Retrieved September 18, 2022.
^ Bengtson, John; Brownlow, Kevin (2000). Silent echoes: discovering early Hollywood through the films of Buster Keaton. Santa Monica, Calif.: Santa Monica Press. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-891661-06-8.