May 27, 2014 saw the official inauguration of La Journée de la Résistance—Resistance Day—in France. The newly established holiday honors the heroism of those individuals, celebrated and anonymous, who, in the words of a speaker at the dedication ceremony, “chose liberty over barbarism,” during the World War II Nazi occupation of France. Some time earlier, a competition was held for a sculpture celebrating those brave men and women, some of them young teenagers. The winning work, Vincent Barré’s Colonne de rameaux (Column of Branches), was unveiled at the event. Permanently installed in the lobby of the Jacques Chaban-Delmas building of the Assemblée Nationale and visible from the rue de l’Université, the elegant, restrained, eight-foot tower provides Paris with a nuanced and poetic public monument, at once compelling and intimate, layered with complex meanings.…see the entire article in the print version of June’s Sculpture magazine.
