Missing in Action

Office buildings are never ideal spaces for art viewing, but Lever House’s Ellsworth Kelly exhibition seems almost antagonistic to the idea that the art might be seen at all. Of the three outdoor sculptures, the centerpiece is clearly Untitled (1982), which comprises three large aluminum shapes: a square; a right triangle with a curved hypotenuse; and a tall, narrow rectangle with a slightly swollen middle redolent of a surfboard. There’s scant competition because Untitled (1986) appeared to be missing, and in the place of Untitled (Totem) (2003) stood a pile of various traffic barriers and a dumpster. A piece of metal laying across a wooden pallet may have been the former work, but I didn’t want to inspect closer and disrupt the security guard presiding over the mess, who was eating his lunch. The lobby (inaccessible without a key card) holds two more surfboard-type sculptures, one of padouk, the other an almost black bronze. Four scale models of larger works are deposited in glass vitrines that once encased soaps and other Unilever products. These small pieces are …