Bearing Witness, Public sculpture at Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C., United States

Bearing Witness is a 40-foot bronze sculpture by Martin Puryear, installed in 1997 outside the Ronald Reagan Building. Separate bronze sheets, riveted to an interior stainless steel armature, form a tall vertical structure with one flat side and a large bulbous curve on the other. It weighs an estimated 20,000 pounds.

Bearing Witness was commissioned for the Ronald Reagan Building under the GSA's 1% program, which sets aside one percent of a building's construction budget for art. Completed in 1997, it cost one million dollars and remains the most expensive GSA-commissioned artwork in Washington. Puryear worked with a Rhode Island shipbuilding company to build the bronze-and-steel structure.

Locals call the 40-foot bronze "the thumb," and the space around it hosts occasional concerts, art jams and food tabling. Puryear oriented the flat side away from the Reagan Building so that, in a democracy, "people talk back to the government." Observers often read the form as a head or fang mask; critic David Levi-Strauss links it to the head of Puryear's daughter, Sasha.

The sculpture stands directly in front of the Ronald Reagan Building and is freely accessible without barriers or restrictions. Visitors can walk around the work and view it from multiple angles.

The sculpture was constructed in collaboration with a Rhode Island shipyard that applied marine engineering techniques to build the metal framework. This unusual partnership brought maritime craftsmanship techniques into the public art space.