Pedestrians on Cross Campus today stopped to watch a sculpture being installed outside of William L. Harkness Hall across from Bass Library.

The statue is Max Ernst’s Habakuk, which Jeffrey H. Loria ’62, after whom the Loria Center is named, donated to the Yale University Art Gallery in 2005, according to the Gallery’s catalogue. The statue is now being installed on Cross Campus in honor of University President Peter Salovey, said Cathleen Chaffee, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Gallery, who is helping oversee the installation.

The cast bronze statue, which was completed in 1970, is nearly 15-feet tall and weighs nearly 5,000 pounds, according to the Gallery’s catalogue. Chaffee said that though the statue is named after a prophet in the Hebrew Bible, she sees it as an avian figure. She added that Ernst, a 19th-century German artist prominent in the Dada and Surrealist movements, was fascinated with birds.

Yesterday afternoon, members of the Yale community received an email from Associate Dean for the Arts Susan Cahan featuring an invitation from President Salovey and Marta Moret to attend the sculpture’s dedication ceremony, which will take place on Monday at 4:30pm outside of Harkness Hall.

The sculpture was brought over this morning from storage on West Campus, and installation will be completed tomorrow, Chaffee said.