It is surprisingly easy to miss the bronze sculpture on the path between Tappan and UMMA: its worn surface simply seems to sink into the natural landscape. There is something that seems so ancient, so primordial about the shape – the top of which bears a striking resemblance to Cycladic statues of the prehistorical Mediterranean. And yet at the same time the Ternary Marker has a very modern feel to it, as well, in the way that its upper half seems to sit almost precariously atop the pair of inverted triangles that make up its base. It should be no surprise, then, that the sculpture installed in 2003 is part of a series by the artist Beverly Pepper which she has called “Urban Altars.” Along with its cousin Triad Ritual by the same artist on North Campus, Ternary Marker exists somewhere in the space where a primitive past intrudes on the metropolitan present – that point where the seemingly parallel lines of myth and modernity intersect.

Sculptor: Beverly Pepper

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