Leonard Baskin; Sculptor Helped Create Memorial to FDR

Leonard Baskin, 77, sculptor who helped create the Washington memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For the FDR memorial, which was dedicated in 1997, Baskin created a 30-foot-long bas-relief of the president’s funeral procession that depicted the coffin on a caisson followed by people with heads bowed and hands reaching for each other in search of comfort. “I tried to show the deep sorrow of the people,” Baskin said. “People were overwhelmingly moved. This patrician had such a touch for the common man.” Baskin was also known for his work on the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Mich. Dedicated in 1994, that sculpture shows a 7-foot seated figure with a fist over its face and a hand raised to the sky. “It’s ambivalent,” the artist said. “The figure is in some sort of misery, wrapped up entirely in himself.” Baskin, who also worked on the Woodrow Wilson Memorial in Washington, taught at Smith College and Hampshire College for more than 40 years. His woodcuts, prints and sculptures have been shown in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Vatican Museum, the British Museum and the Library of Congress. On Saturday in Northampton, Mass.