The Quest (Portland, Oregon)
The Quest is an outdoor marble sculpture and fountain in Portland, Oregon. It’s also known as Saturday Night at the Y or Three Groins in a Fountain. The work was designed by Count Alexander von Svoboda and carved in Carrara, Italy from a single 200-ton block of white Pentelic marble quarried near Athens.
Commissioned by Georgia-Pacific in 1967, it was installed in 1970 in front of the Standard Insurance Center (then the Georgia-Pacific Building) at Southwest Fifth Avenue and Taylor Street. The sculpture shows five nude figures—a trio of women, one man, and a child—placed on a pedestal inside a fountain with water jets. Their forms rise and bend, with two women raising their hands and the man reaching upward; the child stands behind the foremost woman. Svoboda said it represents humanity’s search for brotherhood and enlightenment.
The piece is about 20 feet tall, 10 feet wide, and 15 feet long (with a pedestal around 22 by 10 by 5 feet) and weighs about 17 tons. It was carved in Italy by about 35 stonemasons and took two and a half years to complete. It was originally installed on the building’s Fourth Avenue side and was later moved to the World Forestry Center.
The Quest is privately owned but publicly viewable. As of 1990, it was Portland’s largest single piece of white marble sculpture. It has received mixed reviews—some praised its flowing lines, while others criticized it as inappropriate for schoolchildren. It has nicknames including Saturday Night at the Y and Three Groins in a Fountain.
In 1994, Smithsonian’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! program listed it as well maintained and noted minor repairs, such as work on the nose of the male figure. The artist’s companion sculpture is Perpetuity, a hollow redwood cross-section with a bronze seedling. The piece was part of Georgia-Pacific’s private collection unveiled with the company’s Portland world headquarters.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 00:17 (CET).