Making an impact
While journalists inherently know their work matters, we often aren’t privy as to how exactly it incites change.
But in the case of “Torque,” our sources told us that our March 2026 account of how Richmond’s largest, and arguably most significant, public artwork had never been identified with a plaque, motivated city officials and arts advocates to rectify the oversight.
We share this not to brag but to let you know that Richmondside’s journalism, supported by readers like you, can, and does, make a difference.
— Kari Hulac, Editor-in-Chief
The origins of a massive concrete sculpture that has loomed over Richmond’s auto plaza for 45 years no longer have to remain a mystery. The city has finally delivered on a decades-old promise to install a name plaque.
Now anyone who stops by to marvel at the 240-ton “Torque,” considered a feat of architectural and physical engineering of its time, won’t have to do an internet search to figure out what it is, or who made it. After Richmondside wrote about the sculpture in March and its significance as one of the city’s oldest (and largest) public artworks, Richmond city officials and arts advocates decided to rectify the oversight.
In October, at “Torque’s” home on Auto Plaza off Blume Way, the city quietly installed a simple square gray sign engraved with the sculpture’s name, which references the way automobile engines work, artist Jacques Overhoff’s handwritten signature and a description of the project.
Overhoff, who was born in Amsterdam around the time it was occupied by Nazis, considered the piece his life’s greatest work, and the sign expresses his visionary spirit.
“A proponent of Upside-Down Thinking, he lived by the motto ‘Do something.’ For Overhoff, that usually meant doing something large that defied gravity,” the plaque reads.
Overhoff was originally promised a sign by the city in the early 1980s, but it never came to be. It’s unclear why, as most everyone who worked there has retired or is no longer alive.
The late artist himself, when he once sat beneath “Torque” to be interviewed for a not-yet-finished documentary, called the oversight an “oddity.”
His daughter, Serena Overhoff, told Richmondside she tried on and off over the years to get it done but ran into red tape, something city arts supporters told Richmondside is an all-too common lament among local creatives who apply for grants.
When Richmondside began researching the sculpture’s history and its place in the city’s overall public arts program Serena Overhoff was surprised to hear from this reporter. Still feeling fresh with grief from her father’s death at 91 in December 2024, she was moved to tears recalling her relationship with him and his work.
The Richmondside story, published in March 2026, inspired Serena Overhoff and local arts advocates, including Michele Seville and Kaelen Van Cura, who has since become chair of the city’s Arts and Culture Commission, to revisit commissioning a plaque.
The arts commission in May unanimously approved paying for the signage, Van Cura told Richmondside. Seville, who has been critical of the city’s cumbersome process for commissioning public art, said it’s delightful that it has finally happened.
“He would have been just so proud,” Serena Overhoff told Richmondside last week.
But she added that his legacy is about more than just having a sign at the site.
“The intention … long-term was to create community and a space for people to gather and celebrate Hilltop for what it represented in terms of the auto dealerships,” she said. “And now there’s education to the community as to what this 240-ton design and installation means.”
“He lived by the motto ‘Do something.’ For Overhoff, that usually meant doing something large that defied gravity.”
Excerpt from a new city plaque commemorating “Torque” at Richmond’s Auto Plaza
The next steps are to plan a 2027 rededication and community celebration, something the Richmond Arts and Culture Commission will need to approve, and to beautify the surrounding landscaping, making the traffic island where the artwork stands more accessible and pedestrian-friendly.
“We’re here to do something,” Overhoff said, emphasizing her father’s “do,” motto and the mission of his legacy, The Jacques Overhoff Foundation. “(The city) did something. Now that there’s definition to the piece, we’re going to continue doing something through a rededication to celebrate the space and support the future of public artists.”
“The monumental tension between arrows and engines. Auto Mall meets iconic art. Pushing the meaning of what could be a humdrum public space, ‘Torque’ juxtaposes a metaphor for the internal com- bustion engine with an homage to Native American history at the site.” — The Jacques Overhoff Foundation
Portrait photography of the late Jacques Overhoff: Ray Kachatorian
