Half wished it would rain, because parts of the ellipse, both inside and outside, flare out and would serve as a kind of 10-ten umbrella, depending on wind.

The piece beside it in the garden--four more or less parallel curving steel walls--made me think of Christo's Gates. Both have the quality of being enhanced by the presence of people.

Something about the overcast light that day (and probably also the non-reflective surfaces of Serra's fascinatingly rusted steel plates) made the spaces between the plates seem as beautifully lit as a painter's studio. This soft, shadowless, yet strangely vibrant light made the people exploring and examining the construction incredibly interesting to look at, much more so and for a much longer time than the sculpture itself.

The similar pieces indoors were fun to walk around in a gazebo-like way, but without the natural daylight they did not have the same allure, at least for me.

Serra's smaller scale early work left me cold, or brought out my latent low-brow hostility to minimalist, high concept, low craft (or whatever you call it) art.

It's all chutzpah, no heart, was my reaction. Not that I like paintings of saucer-eyed waifs. But it bugs me to see a chunk of vulcanized rubber leaned against a gallery wall with a label reading (essentially), "Chunk of Vulcanized Rubber."

All the early work struck me the same way. I was non-plussed, for example, by the steel House of Cards. Unless the point is to make you want to knock it over. But I reject the argument that art is successful if it merely gets a rise out of you, including just pissing you off.