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DEL.ICIO.USLess-than-kingly contribution?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When government commissions demand changes in a work of art, bad things usually happen. Commissions tend to be bureaucratic, risk-averse and politically sensitive, while good art tends to be none of those things.
However, “usually” isn’t “always.” And in the case of the proposed statue of Martin Luther King Jr. to be installed at the Tidal Basin area in Washington, D.C., changes demanded by the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts are wise and necessary.
According to the commission, the statue as now proposed by sculptor Lei Yixin makes King appear “static in pose, confrontational in character” rather than “dynamic in stance, meditative in character.” While those are purely subjective terms, the commission’s take is right. The latest version does make King seem forbidding and cold, while King in reality was anything but.
The statue is planned as the centerpiece of a $100 million memorial to King and the movement he led. Because it will be placed on federal property in Washington, the commission has final say over its design.
Georgians, on the other hand, don’t have much standing to gripe. A memorial foundation is seeking public and private contributions to help cover the final $7 million —- Maryland, for example, has budgeted $500,000 for the effort, and the city of Denver has pledged $40,000.
And Georgia, the land of King’s birth? Earlier this year, the General Assembly appropriated the kingly sum of $20,000 to help honor the state’s most famous native son in one of the nation’s most sacred places.
Maybe it wasn’t intended as such, but that comes across as an insult. It calls to mind the actions of then-Gov. Lester Maddox, who in the days after King’s assassination in 1968 refused to fly the flag at half mast. But as a minister, King would have understood that “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.”
—- Jay Bookman, for the editorial board (jbookman@ajc.com)
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By southfulton
May 21, 2008 4:56 PM | Link to this
Well, the statute will be made of Chinese Marble with Chinese builders and Architects instead of good ole Georgia Marble and American architects.