WattsOS
LF
Linked Figure with Ball
1994 · Steel
10' 8" x 16" x 16" (325.1 × 40.6 × 40.6 cm)
Museum of Modern Art
WATTS INDEXThe canonical database of visual culture
Tom Otterness
American, 1952
WA-00028799
Wichita, KS, USA
SculptureNaive Art
Representation
None documented
2
Institutional Exhibitions
6
Works in Collection
14
Assets Indexed
4
Authority-backed Facts
0
Publications Referenced
90%
Profile Completeness
Cultural Positioning
Influence Graph
No influence edges encoded yet.
Authority Records (3)
Selected Institutional Exhibitions
View all exhibitions →No image
Projects: Tom Otterness
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1987
No image
An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture
Museum of Modern Art, New York
1984
Field Verification (4 fields)
4 cross-verified · 0 single-source
- BiographyMoMA· 93%✓
- Birth yearMoMA· 93%✓
- LocationMoMA· 93%✓
- NationalityMoMA· 93%✓
Source Registry (2)
- SothebysTier 3 · Scraped/inferred100%
- MoMA bulk 2026-05-04Tier 1 · Institutional92%
About
Why this artist matters now
Tom Otterness is an American sculptor known for cast bronze figurative work rendered in a deliberately cartoonish, almost toy-like register. His public sculptures populate plazas, parks, and transit systems across North America and Europe, depicting whimsical or absurdist scenes of everyday life, often with a sly political undertone. Working primarily in cast bronze, he combines mass production techniques with fine art tradition, blurring the boundary between public monument and accessible design object. His formal vocabulary draws from folk art, commercial signage, and the vernacular aesthetics of American consumer culture.
Source: Sothebys · Trust score: 100% · Updated 1mo ago
Graph relationships
Taste overlap and adjacency
Movement
Naive Art
Medium
Sculpture
Related Artists
12 in graph
Institutional
Museum Collections
Canonical record
Artworks (6)
Artwork sources (2)
6 published of 11 catalogued · 8 with image
- MoMA5 publishedof 10 catalogued8 img
- Cleveland Museum of Art1 published
Per-Artwork Provenance Chains (top 1)
1 entries · 1 sources
- 1993 · Cleveland · 1 provUrl Pattern Extraction 2026-05-27·accession_number
Record
Images
Relationships
6Movements1
Institutional
Representation & Collections
In collection
Cleveland Museum of Art
In collection
Museum of Modern Art
New York, US
Market
Auction sale history
Houses that have sold works by this artist at auction
Market
Auction History
Range: $6,250 – $1,512,500
| Work | Auction House | Date | Estimate | Hammer Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christie's | Dec 2025 | $20,000 – $30,000 | $30,480 | |
| Christie's | Dec 2025 | $18,000 – $25,000 | Unsold | |
| Christie's | Jul 2024 | $8,000 – $12,000 | $17,640 | |
| Christie's | Nov 2023 | $200,000 – $300,000 | Unsold | |
| Christie's | Jul 2023 | $15,000 – $20,000 | $12,600 | |
| Christie's | Dec 2022 | $50,000 – $70,000 | $47,880 | |
| Christie's | Oct 2021 | $20,000 – $30,000 | Unsold | |
| Christie's | Jul 2021 | $20,000 – $30,000 | $23,750 | |
| Christie's | May 2021 | $18,000 – $25,000 | Unsold | |
| Christie's | Dec 2020 | $5,000 – $7,000 | $6,250 |
Showing 10 of 20 results
Record