In the 1980s, Victor Salmones (1937-1984) was among the most famous sculptors working in Mexico, and Nello L. Teer III and his wife Janet were introduced to his work at exhibitions in Acapulco and Mexico City, where they traveled frequently from their home in Guatemala. During one such jaunt they visited Salmones’s studio and were captivated by a completed sculpture called “Search for Identity.” They purchased the piece from the artist straight away, and made it a gift to Duke Engineering. The Teers engaged a local headstone maker to craft the pedestal for the piece, which now stands in the courtyard of the building that bears their family name.
On a subsequent trip to Palm Beach, the Teers were driving through a neighborhood with high, meticulously manicured hedges and through an artful break in the greenery were surprised to spy a sculpture nearly identical to the one they had bought—clearly an earlier or later iteration on the same theme.
