Museum Without Walls

• 18th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway
• Stainless steel, on red granite base
• Height 12'; diameter 16' (base height 11'8")
• Initiated by Polish-Americans of Philadelphia
• Owned by the City of Philadelphia

Mikolaj Kopernik (1473–1543), better known by the Latinized version of his name, Nicolaus Copernicus, laid the foundations of modern astronomy. In an age when philosophers and the Church believed that the entire universe centered on the earth, the Polish mathematician and churchman dared to suppose that the earth revolved about the sun.

The memorial sculpture by Connecticut artist Dudley Talcott was commissioned and donated to the city by a committee of Polish Americans formed to honor Kopernik on the 500th anniversary of his birth. In Talcott's design, the 16-foot circle symbolizes the earth's orbit; fixed at the center is the sun, its rays extending to infinity. The angular framework alludes to Kopernik's homemade astronomical instruments, some of which were exhibited at the Franklin Institute before the sculpture's unveiling. The 1973 dedication of Kopernik climaxed a year-long celebration of ethnic heritage by Philadelphia's large community of Polish Americans.

Adapted from Public Art in Philadelphia by Penny Balkin Bach (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1992).