interaction, there is no piece." That statement fits within the wider intention behind Serra's work. In a lecture given at Yale University in 1990, he declared that his sculptures are meant to "become part of the site and restructure both conceptually and perceptually the organization of the site". He further underlined this in his speech at the dedication of "The Fox and the Hedgehog" at Princeton. "It seems to be that one of the basic functions of art is to enable us to acknowledge thought and perception in ways that other things do not. To engage thought does not mean that the thought is contained solely within the work itself, it also means that the thought is contained within the dialogue that the work engenders in relation to its place." In the case of The Hedgehog and the Fox, the steel sheets are hosed down in order to enhance the reddish-brown rust on the steel ribbons and suggest the colour of the fox. The fluid sinuosity of their movement adapts itself to the curves of the football stadium in the background, so as to create a visual continuum. Fortuitously, the upper edges of the sheets are now echoed by the gables and edges of the nearby Lewis Science Library, completed later in 2008, producing the prickly effect of a hedgehog curled up in defence. For all its seeming abstraction, the sculpture has a personal significance for Serra himself. His interest in steel as an art medium began when he was a young man working in Californian steel mills to finance his education. Another powerful influence was the San Francisco shipyard where his father worked as a pipe-fitter. Serra has said that "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory which has become a reoccurring dream." As in the proletarian workspace of the shipyard, his creations are shifted from the pedestal and allow an interaction between the work and the viewer. His reading of the line by Archilochus therefore reverses the moral order of the original fable of The Hedgehog and the Fox. The hedgehog, insisting on a patrician exclusive culture, is intellectually dead; the fox's adaptability (demonstrated by this sculpture's relationship to its environment) is the correct strategy for intellectual progress. References External links Princeton University Art Museum Outdoor sculptures in New Jersey Princeton University buildings 1999 sculptures Steel sculptures in New Jersey