The Ghost Hammer

Sculpture, poetry, and a lasting Jersey connection at the Monmouth Museum

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  The Ghost Hammer by Murray Dewart, is installed on the grounds of the Monmouth Museum. 

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  Murray Dewart at work. Photograph supplied by the artist.

A new work of public art has joined the grounds of the Monmouth Museum. The Ghost Hammer, created by internationally recognized sculptor Murray Dewart, brings together two disciplines that have long shaped the way we understand the world: sculpture and poetry. 

The bronze work features a cast of Robert Pinsky’s hand holding a three-pound hammer above a stanza from his poem, "Ghost Hammer". It is a fitting addition to the Monmouth Museum's Meyer Art & Nature Area. Pinsky, a Long Branch native and former United States Poet Laureate, has been called by Bruce Springsteen “truly the voice of the Jersey Shore.” 

Dewart and Pinsky have worked together for years, collaborating on a poetry anthology, two sculptures, and book talks around the country. The Ghost Hammer gives that relationship a physical presence: a hand, a tool, and a poem in conversation with one another. 

Dewart describes artists as people who feel the pressure to take something out of the silence of an ordinary day. The sculpture carries that thought quietly. The hammer suggests labor and making; the hand points to the artist behind the work; and Pinsky’s words place the object in a larger conversation about memory, language, and attention.

Over a fifty-year career, Dewart has created large public and private sculptures in the United States and around the world. His work appears in more than fifty museums and parks, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the DeCordova Museum; the Boston Athenaeum; Harvard University; the Haifa Museum of Art; and the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam. He has also received major public commissions in Beijing, Fuzhou, Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline. 

For the Monmouth Museum, The Ghost Hammer is more than a new sculpture. It is an enduring tribute to Robert Pinsky’s voice, Murray Dewart’s artistry, and the connection between the eye, the hand, and the heart. Visitors are invited to spend time with the work on their next visit and discover it as part of the Monmouth Museum’s growing outdoor experience.