Sidney Simon: A Centennial Exhibition

Sidney Simon was perhaps best known for his sculpture, working primarily with clay, terra cotta, and bronze. His public commissions included sculptures at World Wide Plaza in Manhattan, the Graham Building in Philadelphia, and at the United States Military Academy at West Point and his work is in the collections at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Art Gallery, the Williams College Museum of Art, and PAAM.

Simon, along with his two close friends and colleagues Varujan Boghosian and Paul Resika, showed regularly at Provincetown’s legendary Long Point Gallery from 1977 to 1998. His wife Renee Simon told the Cape Cod Times: “There was a lot of wit in his sculpture. He loved the imagery in his mirror series, where he would sculpt a figure in a fun house mirror so it looked totally distorted. And then when you’d look in the mirror, it was a perfectly normal figure. What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you see yourself? Do you see something that isn’t there?”

In addition to his work in Provincetown, Simon also founded the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine with artists Bill Cummings and Henry Varnum Poor, and helped start the Artists’ Equity Association, a union for artists.

He passed away in August of 1997 at the age of 80.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website