Fermi by Tony Smith, 1975

In this sculpture, tony smith pays homage to Enrico Fermi, the Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist who investigated quantum theory and atomic structures. The balls and connecting bonds in this modular from resemble greatly magnified particles of the atom.

Smith's work often begins with a modular system or forms based on regular and irregular polyhedrals. In Fermi, acquired by Henry T. Segerstrom in 1975, Smith directs the viewer to consider the complex structure of nature while offering up a form that can also be appreciated for its uncomplicated elegance. Physical phenomena like momentum, velocity, weight, and counterweight interested Smith, and he was able to bring these ideas together and manipulate them. How one understands weigh and volume has been explored by sculptors since the beginning of the art form.

The modernists understood it by penetrating it, but Smith recognized it by changing it to mass. Ultimately, Smith shied away from referring to his three-dimensional works as sculptures, instead calling them "presences." Smith is often cited as the leading sculptor of the proto-Minimalist wing of abstract Expressionism.