| Fountain Family Group | |
|---|---|
 Sculpture and fountain (photographed 1995) | |
 | |
| Artist | Richard H. Ellis |
| Year | 1969 |
| Medium | Bronze sculpture |
| Location | Hilbert Museum of California Art, Orange, California, U.S. |
| 33°47′20″N117°51′24″W / 33.7890°N 117.8566°W | |
Fountain Family Group, sometimes called Nuclear Family, [1] is a 1969 bronze sculpture and fountain by Richard H. Ellis, formerly installed along Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, California.
The artwork features four figures: a father, a mother, a boy, and a girl. The original location of the fountain and bronze was the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street in Santa Monica, with a street address of 2600 Wilshire Blvd. [2]
The 8 ft (2.4 m) tall [3] sculpture was installed in 1969 at one of Howard Ahmanson Sr.’s richly decorated Home Savings of America branches, along with a mosaic mural called Pleasures Along the Beach by Millard Sheets. [4] The Millard Sheets Studio hired Ellis several times. Ellis created statues for five Home Savings branches, all on family themes. [4] [5]
Family was surveyed by the Smithsonian Institution's Save Outdoor Sculpture! program in 1995. [6]
The fountain and mural at the former Santa Monica branch were relocated to the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange, California in 2019, along with a third piece from the building, John Edward Svenson's cast bronze Child on a Dolphin. [7] [8] Family and Dolphin will be installed in the museum's California native plant garden when it reopens after expansion in 2023; the Sheets mosaic will be installed on the facade of the museum building. [1]
The original building also featured stained glass windows by Susan Hertel; they were removed and put into storage in 2021. [9]
Arenson, Adam (2018). Banking on beauty : Millard Sheets and midcentury commercial architecture in California. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-4773-1529-3. OCLC 986993216.
