LOVE Statue Coming Back!

After a yearlong hiatus during which its colors were restored to the originals planned by its designer, the LOVE statue is coming back home to Philadelphia. The work of art, which weighs almost 900 pounds, has stood sentry over the eponymous Love Park for the past 41 years. While the statue was being worked on, city planners took the opportunity to revamp the park as well.

After a parade around town on a flatbed truck, the iconic LOVE statue will be restored to its rightful place downtown. Photo credit: CC Techserv

The repainting of the LOVE statue came about after it was touched up and representatives of Robert Indiana, the statue’s creator, informed the city that it was painted the wrong colors. According to the New York Times: “the sections that had been painted blue should actually have been purple — a color that distinguishes Philadelphia’s “LOVE” from the dozens of other versions in other American cities and around the world.”

The revelation was baffling to the City of Philadelphia, which owns the statue, since nobody in charge could remember the LOVE statue ever being anything besides blue, green, and red. Margot Berg, the city’s public art director, said that she would consider it sacrilege to paint a statue colors other than those intended by the artist, and confirmed that the city had no photos on file of the statue in any colors but with the blue. Once the mistake was rectified, there were concerns that people would react poorly to one of the city’s visual icons having a different look.

“Our ‘LOVE’ is a big part of our identity here, visually, the way Philadelphians think about their downtown landscape and the things that are highly recognizable as being a part of our city,” Berg pointed out “So the idea that we would bring it back in a different color was, ‘Gasp — how’s that going to go?’”

Something tells me that Philadelphia will just be happy to have its LOVE statue back. It will return on February 13th, just in time for Valentine’s Day.