Money to refurbish “Gift of the Wind,” a sculpture at the MBTA red line station at Porter Square, could be in the Legislature’s budget as soon as April, state representative Majorie Decker told the Porter Square Neighbors Association on Thursday.
“I feel fairly confident,” Decker said, “that we will be able to figure something out.”
The first step is determine the cost of reviving the art. “There are many estimates floating around,” association president Ruth Ryals said. Mentioned at the meeting was one from August 2025 as $166,000 by Jason Weeks, head of the Cambridge Arts Council; others went up to a quarter-million dollars or $600,000.
Former transportation secretary Monica Tibbits-Nutt committed before her departure in October 2025 to working with Cambridge on finding money to refresh the sculpture, Decker said. Now she believes her replacement, Phillip Eng, will step up. “The MBTA knows it’s also a liability for them to keep it there and to not actually maintain it,” Decker said.
A policy order by city councillor Joan Picket in June 2024 asked staff to explore the city partnering with the MBTA to preserve and restore the art. The effort lost its champion when Pickett died that August.
“Gift of the Wind” is by Susumu Shingu – called the “sculptor of the wind” – and was installed in 1983 at the state-owned T station as part of Arts on the Line, a program run by the Cambridge Arts Council and MBTA that followed the lead of cities such as Stockholm, Paris and Montreal. Cambridge’s Percent-for-Art program was created in 1979 to set aside some development permit fees to keep creative works in public spaces.
The problem with such programs is that money is set aside to pay artists and install works, but often not to maintain those works, said Decker and others at the meeting.
Rising 46 feet on a pole, the steel and aluminum “Gift of the Wind” features three “lobster claws,” each more than 11 feet wide, that rotate and tumble when the wind moves them. Originally a bright red, the metal structures have faded to a kind of brick pink since a refurbishment in 1998.
“If they just took it down, replaced a few screws, painted and put it back up,” that would still involve heavy-duty mechanical hoists and cherry-pickers, which would tie up part of the intersection, Ryals said. “It’s a difficult project.”
A 2020 assessment by the conservation consultant Rika Smith McNally said the art cannot be repainted as it stands “because its corroding layers of paint must be completely removed for new paint to properly adhere,” and the aluminum sheeting may require fills or other repairs. Although the sculpture continues to spin smoothly, the consultant said, “its interior ball bearings should be inspected during repair and replaced if needed.”
A new assessment must describe the cost, after which Decker believed Eng “will continue that work.”
“What it looks like in terms of what the city’s responsibility will be in terms of liability and money, we’re not there yet,” Decker said.
Another arts conversations at the meeting worried about the next home for the Sign of the Dove gallery, a cooperative of 19 people, that loses its lease at the Porter Square Shopping Center at the end of April. (Its neighbor, the nonprofit Mudflat pottery studio, also weren’t offered a chance to renew its lease, but is not looking to relocate.)
Ryals hoped the gallery could find a home in one of the area’s empty storefronts, in Lesley University’s nearby University Hall or behind the shopping center’s Cafe Zing. A prominent corner space at Lesley looks unlikely because “there already is a potential client in line for that that space,” said Heather Shaw, vice provost for Art and Design at the school. And Zing is reportedly preparing to shut down and redivide its space over the summer.
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