Less Mao, more Rodin, please.

The planned statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured left) , which is to be placed in Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin, is apparently “too confrontational,” according to an arts committee that has final say on the manner. The committee says it looks like the kind of statue you would find in a totalitarian […]

The planned statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured left) , which is to be placed in Washington, D.C.’s Tidal Basin, is apparently “too confrontational,” according to an arts committee that has final say on the manner. The committee says it looks like the kind of statue you would find in a totalitarian state. They want something more like the work of French sculptor Auguste Rodin (whose “Thinker” is pictured

right).

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts thinks “the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries,” commission secretary Thomas Lue

bke said in a letter in April.

The Washington Post says: By law, no project like the memorial can go forward without approval from the commission, the federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics in the capital.

Also from the article:

It is the second time in recent months that the memorial to the slain civil rights leader has come under fire. Last year, critics complained after a Chinese sculptor known for his monumental works of figures such as Mao Zedong was selected to create King and other elements of the memorial in China.

The $100 million memorial, which is being built largely with private donations by the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, is planned for a crescent-shaped four-acre site among Washington’s famed cherry trees on the northwest shore of the basin. Construction is expected to start this year and end next year.

The centerpiece is to be a 2 1/2 -story sculpture of the civil rights leader carved in a giant chunk of granite. Called the Stone of Hope, it would depict King, standing with his arms folded, looming from the stone. At 28 feet tall, it would be eight feet taller than the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.

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