Albert Wein, N.A., was adept at creating monumental, architectural, garden, memorial sculpture. Some of his important commissions include:
- WPA Frankfort Post Office project in 1941 for a sculpture for the interior of a new post office building in Frankfort, New York. The four and a half foot tall wooden relief titled Growth was installed in 1942 and remains there today.
- National Sculpture Society’s Mrs. Louis Bennett Prize for his sculpture Banishment from Eden and was elected membership to the Society in 1942.
- Society of Medalists 43rd Issue which was such a success that it was selected by the National Sculpture Soicety “as representative of comtemporay American art in medallic form” for the Federation Internationle des Editeurs de Medailles section of the Exposition Internationale in Rome in 1953.
- Brookgreen Gardens, where a nine-foot limestone statue of “Phryne Before the Judges” was commissioned by Anna Hyatt Huntington for the world’s largest sculpture garden in Murrells Inlet, S.C. It took over two years to carve and was installed in 1952.
Steuben Glass Co., where he designed an Americana series of engraved glass for the Steuben division of the Corning Glass Company from 1954 to 1956.
- The Bronx Zoo, where he designed the penguin house.
- The Franklin Mint General George Custer Medal.
- Temple Akiba in California hired Wein to create several free-standing sculptures including a 24 ft high bronze relief for the facade of the building in 1963.
- Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles where he created five welded bronze letters to spell the Hebrew word emunah, or faith in English.
- University of Wyoming commissioned six sculputres of abstracted scientific symbols for the exterior piers of the university’s new science building.
- Libby Dam As the winner of a 1973 competition, Wein’s design was picked unanimously by the judges for its wonderfully designed and clear image which could still be seen from afar. It became the largest granite bas-relief on a structure in the United States: a 90-ton 27-by-30-foot sculpture on the Libby Dam in northwest Montana. The dam, which spans the Kootenai River, is part of a joint project of the United States and Canada, and the relief, which has figures of horses, salmon and an Indian taming a river, symbolizes cooperation between the countries. This work took several years to complete, and “has been likened by critics to other sculptures in the U.S. grand tradition such as Daniel Chester French’s seated figure of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, Gutzon Borglum’s Mount Rushmore and Paul Manship’s gilded bronze statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center Plaza”. It was dedicated by President Gerald Ford in 1975.
- West Palm Beach Mall. In 1987, he was commissioned to create a bronze life-size sculptural composition of the Greek Myth huntress Diana. The sculpture’s complex composition yet fluid movement is an excellent example of how Wein could manipulate shape and form into three dimensional magic.
Other Wein works are included in such sites as the Jewish Museum, Gramercy Park Memorial Chapel, the Frankfort Post Office, and Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City.
He left behind a legacy of spectacular works that have universal appeal because of his unique ability to forge a union between centuries of artistic style. Gordon Friedlander – friend and former 21st president of the National sculpture society stated eloquently: “Albert’s work will live on and will endure. These sculptures have already passed the test of time – the true measure of the worth of all creative people.”
