Public Art on Campus - Herring Coe

Artist Herring Coe

(1907-1999) Herring Coe was a Texas artist who studied electrical engineering at Lamar University and sculpture at Cranbrook Art Academy in Detroit, Michigan. Coe is known primarily for working in stone and bronze.

At Cranbrook, known as the “Cradle of American Modernism,” he mentored under internationally-recognized Swedish sculptor Carl Milles, and was exposed to the works of designer Charles Eames and architect Eero Saarinen. Coe served in the navy during World War II, and later sculpted the Battalion Memorial in the Solomon Islands where he fought as a Navy Seabee in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Coe created the bronze sculpture The Texan at the Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi.

In Texas, he is known for sculptures at the Houston City Hall, Rice University Library, and bas reliefs at the entrance to Hermann Park Zoo and numerous other public buildings. His golden bronze medal design, Beyond the Sky, Beneath the Sea, 1967, is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He is known for his relief sculptures on a number of buildings in Beaumont and for designing the egg-crate sunscreen at the First City Building in downtown Beaumont.


ART ON CAMPUS

Title: Untitled (6 total Bas Reliefs)
Year: 1952
Medium: Stone
Location: Sides of Geology and Social and Behavioral Science buildings on MLK