More on the Controversies Surrounding Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Here are two more articles that shed light on how the sculpting job was outsourced, what is being done to correct the situation, how people have felt about the statue as well as it's outsourcing.  The pieces tend to push in different directions and have information I hadn't seen before.

The first report from Cox News Service at Seattle Times "King looks like dictator in statue, critics say " ends with Harry Johnson, president of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project (see copyright protected picture here ) saying:

Johnson chalked up the latest design concerns as chiefly a matter of individual taste.

"Personally, I don't see it," he said of the suggestion that the statue might make King look like a dictator.

But Johnson added that when it comes to painting or sculpture, "You get 10 people in a room and 10 people are going to see 10 different things."

Article also notes that:

The project's chief architect, Ed Jackson Jr., huddled with advisers this week in Ann Arbor, Mich., to discuss ways to address the commission's objections before sculpting of the granite statue begins.

"We said: 'OK, this is what the commission said. How best can we achieve that and retain what we have accomplished thus far?' "

 and:

The King memorial has been authorized by Congress, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in 2006.

Its general design was approved by the seven-member federal commission that year, based on drawings that showed a more subtle image of King, from the waist up, as if he were emerging organically out of the rock, commission members said. 

Marc Fischer on his the Raw Fischer blog at the Washington Post writes that it's Time To Start Over on MLK Statue. 

He starts with:

Martin Luther King was never an arms-folded kind of man. He was never one to tighten up against slings of opposition, never one to choose a cocky or grandiose pose.

Leaf through hundreds of photos of the man, and you see him standing before oceans of Americans, one arm raised to the sky, his mouth open in a call to unity. He reaches forward, rallying, cajoling, explaining. Or he is leaning in, head to head with Lyndon Johnson, and you can almost hear King, the gentle voice, the rock-hard logic.

and goes on from there.

He also reports on others that oppose the statue for its design or outsourcing

tags: martin luther king  martin luther king memorial  

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