Largely inspired by Edward Hicks' famous series of paintings The Peaceable Kingdom, Otterness' piece will consist of cast bronze groupings - large Lenape Indians meeting with diminutive Quakers, and gatherings of lions and lambs, oxen and wolves - set throughout what is known as Aviator Park, the underused acreage that stretches between the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Alexander Calder's Swann Fountain.

Alongside Hicks, another source of inspiration is Edgar Allan Poe, whose head will sit atop a bronze worm gazed upon by a 4-foot-tall raven (in high heels, no less).

Otterness was commissioned about two years ago by the Fairmount Park Art Association, an independent nonprofit organization that will raise the money for the work - estimated to cost about $5 million, including a maintenance endowment, according to association officials.

Robert N.C. Nix 3d, president of the park commission, said the reconfiguration of the area is in line with a continuing effort to make the Benjamin Franklin Parkway more friendly to pedestrians.

"I think it's in touch with what I call 'refurbishing the Parkway,' " said Nix. "It will give people more reason to walk along the Parkway. It will be another destination."

Alex Bonavitacola, vice president of the commission, said he believed the work, featuring large Indians and a small William Penn, "diminishes the importance of William Penn, who probably was the first European to treat the Indians fair and square."

But Bonavitacola voted in favor of the project anyway.

"I didn't want to be an obstructionist," he said later.

Otterness, 55, of New York, said it would take about three years to sculpt and cast all the figures for the piece. Otterness' often-humorous works can be found in New York parks, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Delaware Art Museum, which has his 13-foot bronze Crying Giant.

The two-acre Aviator Park, on the west side of Logan Square, is now home to Paul Manship's globular Aero Memorial and J. Otto Schweizer's All Wars Memorial to Colored Soldiers and Sailors.

Otterness plans to draw these pieces into his reimagined landscape with a pair of newly crafted biplanes, finished in gold leaf, and a pair of bronze winged panthers on globes - an image taken from the 100th Fighter Squadron patch of the Tuskegee Airmen.

The main Peaceable Kingdon groupings will consist of two gently rising islands toward the southeastern portion of the park.

On one, a large, 5-foot-high seated Lenape Indian and a much smaller group of Quakers led by William Penn sign the treaty founding Pennsylvania.

The second island, several feet away, contains a grouping of lions, oxen and other animals - an allusion not only to Hicks' paintings, but to the animals in the Academy of Natural Sciences across the street, and to the city's many public animal sculptures, such as Billy, the bronze goat in Rittenhouse Square.

On the side of the park nearest Calder's fountain, with its swans, turtles and frogs, Otterness has placed a grouping of Lady Liberty with the dove of peace perched on one hand and an eagle eating from the other.

"It's quite a challenge to hold my own next to the Calder fountain and all the other art on the Parkway," Otterness said. "I'm hoping I can join up with what's there."

There will be a total of eight separate groupings throughout Aviator Park with roughly two dozen separate figures, virtually all designed to withstand climbing and sitting - in fact, inviting people, particularly very young people, to do just that.

The park commission had planned to give only conceptual approval for the plan yesterday. But the Otterness was so well received that commissioners decided to give final approval as well. The piece is up for approval next month by the city Art Commission.

Penny Balkin Bach, head of the art association, said that once final approvals are in hand, her organization would have one year to raise the money for the work.