Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

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Hugh R. Butt, The Long Road to Usefulness, 1989
painted steel and hardware
57 x 31 x 8 1/4 in.

Hugh R. Butt was born in Delhaven, North Carolina, in 1910. He earned his B.A. from the University of Minnesota and his M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1933. A doctor on staff at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, Butt is also a self-taught artist who creates metal sculptures. In the 1980s he made a series of sculptures using antique tools he had collected. The artist wrote that this group of sculptures "signifies my belief that it sometimes takes a long time before tools find their proper usefulness."