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What is the world's biggest sculpture? |
Biggest, Tallest, Fastest
A sculpture is generally considered to be a three-dimensional work of art that’s usually made of a hard material, like stone or marble or metal. But the biggest sculpture could be looked at in several ways: Does big mean the heaviest? The tallest? The one that takes up the most space?
Whatever category we put it in, one of the all-around biggest has to be at Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. The sculpture shows the faces of four American presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Designed by Gutzon Borglum, each of the heads stand 60 feet high. (The noses alone are about 20 feet high!)
About 17 miles away, another sculpture is being carved that will be even larger than the one at Mount Rushmore when it’s done. It shows Chief Crazy Horse, a Native American warrior, riding a horse and pointing at something far away. When it’s finished, it’s supposed to be 563 feet high and 641 feet wide, and is being made in part to qualify for the title of “World’s Largest Sculpture.” It’s been in progress since 1948, and was started by Korczak Ziolkowski, who had also worked on Mount Rushmore.
If we’re counting statues, several Japanese Buddhas weigh in at thousands of pounds: One at a temple in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, for instance, tips the scales at about 93 tons, or 186,000 pounds.
