Duane Hanson’s iconic Football Player now on view at MIA

Travelers in Miami International Airport’s Concourse D can now view the iconic, hyperrealist sculpture Football Player, created in 1981 by internationally renowned American artist Duane Hanson (January 17, 1925 – January 6, 1996). On display through February 2020, Football Player is located between gates D47 and D48.

In the 1960s, Hanson created his own familiar technique of casting in polyester resins reinforced with fiberglass. Casting from live models, Hanson would use partial body molds which he would then assemble and perfect until the figure matched his conception. For Football Player, the model was longstanding sculptor and former professional athlete Robert Thiele, who lives and works in both Brooklyn, New York and Miami, Florida.

Known for his uncanny hyperrealist sculptures portraying working-class Americans, Hanson saw himself not as a maker of shockingly realistic effigies but as a keen social observer. Born in Alexandria, Minnesota in 1925, Hanson went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1951. His works can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, among others. Hanson died on January 6, 1996 in Boca Raton, Florida.

Football Player is on loan from the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami.