Blair Thurman Widow's Walk, 2015 neon, acrylic, wood Project for Parcours, Art Basel 2015. Presented at the Naturhistorisches Museum Basel. Widows’ Walk is a version of Merry Widow, one of Thurman’s signature neon works and is based, in a way, on a whale.Thurman’s work incorporates two symbiotic themes: the whale skeleton and the widow’s walk. The whale is a permanent resident of Basel’s Museum of Natural History, demonstrating how this majestic mammal from an old town up New York’s Hudson river finds its way to an even older town up the river Rhine. A ‘widow’s walk’ is a feature of coastal Nantucket architecture, a railing on the keel of the rooftop from which mariners’ wives would watch for their spouses' return often in vain. courtesy galerie frank elbaz, Paris and Gagosian gallery
