{"id":812,"date":"2008-05-09T12:33:38","date_gmt":"2008-05-09T16:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=812"},"modified":"2008-05-09T19:08:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-09T23:08:00","slug":"king-memorial-too-confrontational","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/05\/09\/king-memorial-too-confrontational\/","title":{"rendered":"King Memorial Too “Confrontational”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really have no idea what to say about the latest obstacle to the completion of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Mall<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts<\/a> 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 Luebke<\/a> said in a letter in April.<\/p>\n

[ . . . ]<\/p>\n

Commission members said the sculpture “now features a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character[.]”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I attended the ground breaking for the memorial<\/a> couple of years ago, and had been looking forward to getting to the installation stage. But the Commission has the capacity to grind things to a halt until it’s happy. Frankly, I find the criticisms really strange at this stage, and looking at the sculptor’s previous work, I think it was pretty clear what they were getting. And let’s not even touch on the use of the loaded term “confrontational” in the criticism. I hope we’ll get a little more reporting on this, so public pressure can be applied if necessary, as I’m not particularly inspired by the quotes from Commission members:<\/p>\n

“My image of Dr. King is of him leaning forward in anticipation, holding his chin or raising his arm,” rather than standing with his arms folded, Commissioner Michael McGill said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah? How about a raised arm and a closed fist? I should probably stop before I write something inappropriate.<\/p>\n

One thing I hadn’t realized was that when they selected sculptor Lei Yixin last year was that this meant the memorial would actually be made in China. While I thought the criticism surrounding his selection was mostly sour grapes and silly nativism (and still do), I’ll have to admit that it does seem a bit strange that what may be the last memorial on the Mall will be made in China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really have no idea what to say about the latest obstacle to the completion of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Mall: 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}