After 27 Years, a Popular Sculpture Moves From a National Park Into Private Hands

WASHINGTON — “The Awakening,” J. Seward Johnson Jr.’s 15-foot-high sculpture of a giant struggling to emerge from the earth, is soon to leave a site near the National Mall that millions of tourists have visited since the work’s installation in 1980.

Although it stood for 27 years on public parkland at Hains Point in the southwest section of the city, “The Awakening” did not belong to the National Park Service. It was the property of the Sculpture Foundation, a group that promotes public art. Mr. Johnson, of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical family, gave the foundation a collection of his work to oversee.

The foundation has now sold the cast-aluminum sculpture for 0,000, and it will be relocated in the spring to National Harbor, a billion waterfront project under construction in Prince George’s County in Maryland.

“The Awakening,” which is more than 70 feet across, will be installed on a specially built beach along the Potomac River as the focal point of the 300-acre development. The 60 buildings envisioned for the project are to include shops, restaurants, condominiums, office buildings and a convention center. The National Children’s Museum, whose building is being designed by Cesar Pelli, will also move there from downtown Washington.

Paula Stoeke, director of the Sculpture Foundation, said “The Awakening” had been available for years because the National Park Service could not offer it a permanent home and might have requested that it be removed from Hains Point.

The work, which depicts a bearded man trapped in the earth, was installed, using a temporary permit, along with 500 other pieces as part of a 1980 citywide art exhibition. Six years after the installation, Congress passed a law requiring all public art on National Park Service land in Washington to be installed for a short period unless it was commemorative.

There were no immediate plans for the land where “The Awakening” is now installed, said Sally Blumenthal, a deputy associate regional director for the National Park Service. “It is a prime memorial site, and there are not that many of them,” she said.

The Park Service had no plans to move “The Awakening,” she said, adding: “We think people are going to love it in its new home. It will be visible as you are flying into National Airport from the south.”

Hains Point is a slightly remote, wind-swept spot that often floods, but it is also a favored spot for runners and is on the route of many races.

The new location at National Harbor is in keeping with the sculptor’s intentions for “The Awakening,” Ms. Stoeke said. “Seward Johnson was interested in keeping it in a place that has high visibility,” she said.

Milton V. Peterson, the founder and chairman of the Peterson Companies, which is developing National Harbor, said he had always loved the piece.

“As soon as I found it was for sale, I bought it that week,” he said. “I think it is one of the most demonstrative pieces that we have.”

Mr. Peterson has commissioned three pieces by the sculptor Albert Paley and statues and mosaics by other artists to be placed in the development. There will be a central promenade that terminates at the water and “The Awakening.”

The sculpture’s five pieces, parts of which are shiny from decades of tourists’ caresses, will be loaded onto trucks for the journey to their new home. No restoration is needed, but a small change will be made in the way the giant is displayed, said Jeff Parana, who is National Harbor’s project manager and a vice president of the Peterson Companies. At Hains Point, the pieces were placed slightly off-kilter, making the figure anatomically incorrect. So when the sculpture’s wire base is reburied, one of the legs will be moved slightly.

National Harbor, which is to open in April, will be far from isolated. Boat slips and restaurants will look out over the statue, and runners and bikers will be able to visit it. A bike path is being built from Alexandria, Va., crossing the Potomac at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and water taxis will be available from Washington and Virginia.

The sculpture will sit near an amphitheater with a retractable movie screen and a raised belvedere that will have a terrazzo mural of the Chesapeake Bay. There will be mosaics and metal works lining the steps that lead to the beach, where “The Awakening” giant will at times be bathed in the waters of the Potomac.