The sculpture entitled We Lost is the creation of Tony Smith (1912-1980).  First sketched in 1962, the piece is part of Smith’s exploration of the cube.  Industrial Welding Company fabricated the full-sized sculpture in 1974.  The low-carbon steel sculpture is painted matte black, and has overall dimensions of 126 ¾” on each side of the cube.

The bottoms of the sculpture were cleaned by air-abrasive blast cleaning and then metallized with aluminum, primed, and painted.  New bases were fabricated, primed, painted, and attached to the bottoms of the sculpture.  An access panel was cut in the bottom of the sculpture to facilitate the attachment of the bases.  Zinc granules were distributed on the interior horizontal surfaces to inhibit corrosion due to moisture condensation.  All exterior surfaces were air-abrasively blast cleaned, primed, and painted.  On September 13th, 2013, the sculpture was placed in front of the new Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania.