The other day, I was scouting the old Customs House building when I suddenly got the feeling I was being watched.
I looked down the hallway…
…and saw what appeared to be the angel of death staring back at me.
Without question, this is the creepiest statue I’ve ever come across in New York City. Even stranger, I suddenly felt a strong sense of deja vu. But where would I have have seen this thing before??
Ha, the movies, of course! Turns out, it was featured prominently in Black Swan (brilliant use of an existing location!):
The statue is a 1999 work by artist Fritz Scholder entitled Future Clone, a perfectly unsettling name for such a figure:
Made of bronze, the androgynous angel towers eight feet over a globe:
Two haggard wings stretch out in place of arms:
If you’d like to make a Halloween pilgrimage, you can see it on the ground floor of the National Museum of the American Indian at Bowling Green.
To really get the full impact, wait for the hall to clear of visitors, then stare at it…and continue to stare…
…and then imagine what it would be like if it suddenly tilted its head down at you. Good old fashioned nightmare fuel right there…
-SCOUT
This may same super lame, but I once got the same feeling from a movie. I was bored and Jeepers Creepers 2 came on TV and I was too lazy to change the channel so I started watching. The movie opens with this scene in a cornfield where this creepy scarecrow suddenly proves to be alive. The movie as a whole was TERRIBLE, but the way they handled the lead up to and the actual reveal of the scarecrow scared the bejezzus out of me! I literally got goosebumps all over my entire body. That angel looks like it would be perfect for a similar cameo.
Wow. I recognized it from Black Swan immediately … but prior to this post I would have bet big $$ that it was purpose made for the movie!!
Great find!
It’s also creepy how the face looks a bit like Edgar Allan Poe.
reminds me of the flying monkeys
Yikes! I assumed it was an older statue that had been damaged and disfigured!
I don’t know why, but my initial reaction was the scene from Silence of the Lambs. I know, it was a dead policeman that was strung up, but something about the statue made me think of Silence.
Is it just me, or is that sculpture completely out of place in that building? Maybe that’s the point of having it there, but it just doesn’t seem to fit.
Looks like Icarus to me
Wonder what Cass Gilbert thinks of it.
doesn’t it move in the movie? I seem to remember it did…. or else it was just the fear of it possibly moving that got stuck in my head.
Scout, your idea of visiting this statue as a Halloween pilgrimage site is a great one. You should make a list. Those “eerie owls in Herald Square” would be appropriate too.
Wow! It’s creepy from all the way up here in The Bronx…this statue makes me think of the Mothman Prophecies as it plays out in my head after reading the book.
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Fly? Us?? Why even try?
Amazing resonance.