Mico Kaufman Artwork Gifted to Middlesex Community College

The estate of internationally celebrated local sculptor Mico Kaufman has gifted 27 works of art to Middlesex Community College. The artwork – including bronze and stone sculptures, drawings and U.S. presidential inaugural medals – will be on permanent display in several buildings on the Lowell campus.

Two bronze sculptures – “Agape” and “Su e Giù” – are now on view in MCC’s newly renovated Richard & Nancy Donahue Family Academic Arts Center. The remainder of the collection will be installed in the coming months.

“This generous gift from the Mico Kaufman Trust is a welcome addition to our Lowell campus and beautifully illustrates MCC’s commitment to the arts,” said MCC President James C. Mabry. “It’s especially fitting that the first two Kaufman sculptures are on view in our new Donahue Family Arts Center, which will be a center for teaching, learning and the performing arts for years to come.”

Kaufman, who lived in Tewksbury, was considered one of the premier medalists of his time. He designed inaugural medals for U.S. presidents Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. His work is included in the permanent collections of the American Numismatic Society, the British Museum and the Smithsonian Institute, and numerous private collections.

Among his local public-art commissions are “Homage to Women” (1984), inspired by the mill girls of the Industrial Revolution, located at Market and Palmer streets in Lowell; and “Debussy” (1987), a tribute to composer Claude Debussy situated on the campus of UMass Lowell. (The Debussy sculpture can also be found in Saint Germain en Laye, France, the composer’s birthplace.)

Kaufman also created the “Rouses Memorial” (1980), a monument to a slain police officer located at the JFK Plaza of Lowell City Hall; and “Water” (1985), which depicts Helen Keller with her teacher Annie Sullivan, sited next to Tewksbury Town Hall.

According to the Kaufman Trust, the artist has said: “If you should notice one of my public sculptures, I would like you to stop and ponder on its subject. The pause might refresh, inform and even inspire. My work reflects on the bonds that substantiate our humanity.”

Born in Romania in 1924, Kaufman spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. After the war, he studied at the Academies of Fine Arts in Rome and Florence. He emigrated to the United States in 1951 and became of U.S. citizen in 1956. He died in 2016 at the age of 92.

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