Likeness of an Allegory

Public Art Commission for the City of Minneapolis Permanent Collection
2019 - 2021
Location:  6th Floor EV Hall of the Public Service Building in Minneapolis, MN

Size:  28’ x 8’ x 1’ 

Client:  City of Minneapolis
Medium: Polymer, matte black pigment, synthetic light scrim and light


All photos © Peter J. Sieger

Likeness of an Allegory is a site-specific art installation commissioned for the City of Minneapolis Permanent Collection. Located in the new Minneapolis Public Services Building (2021), LUCITO’s intervention responds to the City’s call for “luminous ceilings” by working with light and its complete absence: a sculptural mass finished in ultra-matte black pigment hovers ominously below an evenly lit ambient field of light.

Due to its unique finish, the hovering mass is devoid of surface features, rendering it in sillhouette and visible to the human eye only at its edges against the light field above.
While operating at this binary interface between light and dark, LUCITO’s work takes inspiration and cues from Ambrogio Loronzetti’s 14th Century frescoes, The Allegory of Good and Bad Government.  

In LUCITO’s Likeness of an Allegory, a game of perceptual hide-and-seek plays out as strategically sculpted characteristics and symbolic features of Minneapolis’ past and present reveal themselves to observant passersby in the lobby below.






worm’s-eye plan diagram
overall / absolute perimeter / bottom profile / top profile / viewshed

(Photo by LUCITO)

(Photo by LUCITO)


(Photo by LUCITO)


(Photo by LUCITO)


(Photo by LUCITO)




full scale assembly plan drawing post-installation
(2021, photo by LUCITO)



concept rendering
(2019, by LUCITO)






Project Team
LUCITO, design, fabrication, assembly and installation

Michael Cohen at Schuler Shook Inc., lighting design
Anthony and Ian Kling at Mokeeta, fabrication

TivoliToo Inc., fabrication
W.L.Hall Co., Barrisol scrim and fascia panel installation
VAA, LLC, structural engineering

Special Thanks to
Dan Pederson

Adam Rosenthal, installation help
Zach Cramer, installation help
Miguel Fresco, assembly help
Peter J. Sieger, photography

Peter VonDeLinde, videography
Tim Oesau, music composition