3 large metal sculptures installed at steel museum

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Three large scrap-metal sculptures depicting a steelworker, a coal miner and a soldier will be installed outside the Youngstown Historical Center for Industry and Labor.

“We are thrilled to have this amazing artwork at the museum,” said Marcelle Wilson, a history instructor at Youngstown State University and the museum’s site manager. “The work is emotional and thought provoking.”

The sculptures, measuring 9 feet tall and weighing more than 400 pounds each, are titled “Steel Worker,” “Coal Miner” and “Wounded Warrior,” and will be on the west side of the museum – commonly referred to as the steel museum – on Wood Street.

The works are by the late Sidney Rackoff, a Youngstown steelworker who earned a Purple Heart during World War II and later attended Yeshiva University and became a rabbi.

He later retired, took art classes and, in the 1980s and 1990s, began creating different types of art, including large metal sculptures.

Rackoff died in 2014.

He also created the landmark 20-foot-tall sculpture of a steelworker that has stood at the entrance to Niles Iron and Metal Co.’s scrap yard on state Route 46 in Niles.

Wilson said Rackoff’s family approached the museum with the offer of donating the sculptures.

His work, which numbers more than 70 pieces, has been exhibited in the Colony Square Mall in Zanesville; Muskingum College; the Randall Park Mall in North Randall, Ohio; Richmond Town Square in Richmond Heights, Ohio; Shaker Square in Cleveland; Secrest Auditorium in Zanesville; the Zanesville Art Center; and area churches, schools and malls in Ohio and West Virginia, as well as the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown.

The steel museum, opened in 1986 and part of the Ohio History Connection, is managed by YSU’s history department.