Today, a clock stands at pretty much the southwest corner of Albuquerque’s “Civic Plaza,” which I put in quotation marks primarily because it’s such a bland, uninformative title desperately calling out for some pizazz. Maybe “Stolen Tiwa Land Plaza” or “John Lewis Plaza,” given that the great jazz pianist grew up here in South Broadway and went to AHS and UNM. Yes, the theater at South Broadway Cultural Center is named for him, but given you can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting something named after Clyde Tingley, you’d think we could honor Mr. Lewis, or the Tiwa, at least somewhat more frequently.

But about that clock.

Yes, today a clock stands at this spot on Civic Plaza. But do you know/remember what used to be at this spot?

In a world before the Internet, we’d turn this into a trivia contest and eventually offer clues like “Prior resident of this spot was installed there as part of the City’s Bicentennial celebration” and at some point one of you would write the correct answer on a piece of paper and mail it and a Cheerios box top or two to Better Burque, 1 John Lewis Plaza, ABQ, NM 87101 to win a year’s supply of Cheerios.

But given the Internet, instead I’ll just save you the 45 seconds it would have taken you to find the answer online and pass along this unfortunately dark image of the April 14, 1979 Albuquerque Journal:

It’s too dark to tell, but I don’t think any of the shadowy, dark figures in the photo above are wearing cowboy hats. That’s a shame. And speaking of shame, which we’ll get to in a second, two questions came to the mind of your humble blogger when first seeing the newspaper photo above: 1. Why was this sculpture replaced with a clock? 2. What happened to the Zia sculpture?

Looking from perspective 2024, we might conjecture that the sculpture was moved due to controversy involving appropriation of indigenous symbols and/or lack of agreement by Zia Pueblo towards the symbol’s use in this artwork/setting. But no…it was moved because of car storage (i.e., parking):

So the unfortunately not already named Stolen Tiwa Land Plaza had/has an underground parking garage beneath it and said car storage facility needed to get bigger or something, and…the sculptures got moved in 1979. As long-time readers recall, this blog used to be all about multi-modal transportation (i.e., how much cars/drivers suck) and this blogpost would be 10,000 words about how much it sucks that car storage “killed” public art as just another one of its endless public evils. Instead, today we’re just distilling 10,000 words into the single independent clause above.

Okay, that’s the answer to Question: What Happened to the Zia Sculpture. Question #2: Where Did the Sculpture Go?, ended up taking far more than 45 seconds, even in this World o’ Internet. After racking my brain trying to remember where I might have seen the piece during any of my rather extensive bike riding through town (according to this nerdy GPS game Wandrer that I’m addicted to, I have now ridden 55% of all the roadways within Abq city limits), I did not recall where I’d seen it but was once again reminded that I’m an extraordinarily unobservant person who very possibly could have passed by the sculpture hundreds of times without realizing that it was there.

So I was stumped. All I found was the info you see above about neighborhood association’s having a contest (ah, the good ‘ol days before the Internet when we had contests) to determine where the sculpture would go and that the piece was at Albuquerque Museum until the contest winner was decided.

So I contacted the folks at Albuquerque Museum which is ALWAYS a hugely pleasant and fruitful endeavor. I love the Museum’s archival staff and they are, along with the Rail Runner, my favorite aspect of living in this town. And, sure enough, a Museum staffer had the info, right down to noting that the Internet was slightly wrong (shocker!) w/r/t the sculpture’s current placement. And, drum roll please, here is the site/address of that sculpture…

(Here’s where we would insert the contest details for readers to chime in with entries with winner receiving a 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville)

Why that’s the old Santa Barbara School, address 1420 Edith Blvd. N.E. with the sculpture at the building’s eastern end at basically the intersection of Kinley and Walter. And keeping with my extraordinary lack of observation skills, I have ridden down this stretch of Edith NE literally hundreds of times (heck I bike commuted down this part of Edith) and never once noticed this sculpture. Not even once.

Thus ends our contest that isn’t a contest. Perhaps you, dear reader, will join me in always now stopping while cycling down Edith to check out Mr. Goodman’s work, all the while cursing car storage as you ride up from John Lewis Plaza on Tiwa Stolen Lands. See you there.