SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) – “Unconditional Surrender,” the huge statue of a sailor kissing a nurse in downtown Sarasota has been moved to a new location nearby, city officials announced Thursday.
On Thursday morning, a crane lifted the statue off its based and slowly hoisted it onto a flatbed truck, which moved it a short distance to a new spot at Bayfront Park.
Unconditional Surrender is one of a series of computer-generated sculptures by artist Seward Johnson, the grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the co-founder of Johnson & Johnson. The aluminum statue resembles a 1945 photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, V–J day in Times Square.
The statue, which first came to Sarasota as a temporary exhibit in 2005, was bought by Jack Curran and donated to the city in his wife’s memory.
It was moved Thursday to create room for a new roundabout on U.S. 41 and Gulfstream Avenue.
The statue is now located in Bayfront Park between O’Leary’s Tiki Bar and Grill and Marina Jack.
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