[Due to posting issues, I'm posting this on behalf of Eric Mank]
The 30ft-tall statue, which forms the centrepiece of a $120 million (£73 million), four-acre memorial to Dr King, opened to the public on Monday on the National Mall in Washington. It is the only memorial on the Mall that does not honour a president or fallen soldiers.
Standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the statue shows Dr King emerging from a mountain of Chinese granite with his arms crossed and is called The Stone of Hope.
However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei's rendering.
Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader's son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.
More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.
I personally found this of interest because I recently visited a friend in DC and we went to see the memorial. My friends first comments were about how it was interesting that they used white granite in honoring a great leader in our civil rights history. There has been some controversy over the fact that the artist was Chinese and not an American. None the less I believe it to pivotal in our history that we are honoring a African American civil rights leader among some of our nations greatest presidents.
What do you think about the controversy of using a Chinese artist for the memorial, do you think it speaks for cooperation among differing races and cultures or do you think it would have been better to use an American artist? What are your general comments on the MLK memorial?
The first thing I think about when I read this is the similar controversy about Maya Ying Lin being the designer and sculptor of the Vietnam Wall. Maya was selected as the winner of a design competition to creative a memorial for those who died in the Vietnam War and it stirred up a lot of anger amongst veterans and other Americans because Maya is of Asian decent. I personally don't think it should really matter who the artist is or where he/she came from as long as the memorial is appropriate and does a good job commemorating the victims.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the artist of the MLK statue was Chinese truly does not matter to me. I actually believe that it shows that America is even more diverse than it used to be. It shows that even a Chinese artist can display his/her artwork on the National Mall in Washington DC.
I also think it's interesting that MLK is being celebrated on the National Mall, because typically only presidents and fallen soldiers are honored here. It really displays the value that American citizens have placed on civil rights. MLK deserves to be celebrated amongst presidents for the work that he did.
I have too heard some of the issues people are having in accepting the monument. I can understand where they are coming from; about having a foreign sculptor, and using white stone and while I do see those issues as relevant, it's, for lack of a better word; 'too late now'.
ReplyDeleteThe sculptures already in place, and I would also LIKE to think that a large group of people were made aware of how/where it would be made long before it was ever sculpted, so their could have been debate and decision about the final outcome, and why it is the way it is.
But whatever the issue people are having with it now, I'm glad to see that the majority of folks are accepting of it and believe in what it stands for.
I agree that it really doesn't matter what race the sculptor of the new MLK monument is. Martin Luther King's struggled for equal rights for all people, and although his main focus was the African American community, he wished for Asian to be treated as equals as well.
ReplyDeleteThere must have been multiple meetings of a committee that went over every detail of the monument, and that committee decided that the Chinese sculptor had the best vision for the memorial so they selected him. And as KMuchmore said, its "too late now." Unless of course somebody decides we should tear the memorial down, but that would just cause all sorts of problems.
The state of Martin Luther King is a great addition to the monuments in Washington DC. He definitely deserves the recognition for being such an influential leader in the Civil Rights Movement. I don't know why having the monument carved in China is so controversial though. I'm sure the people behind the planning for the new monument put plenty of thought into choosing the sculptor. Mr Lei is obviously qualified. The monument looks to be quite accurate. Even his own son thinks the statue is an accurate representation of his father. As for the use of white granite, this was probably chosen to keep the style of the monuments similar in that area. The Lincoln memorial is nearby and the statue of Lincoln is also carved from a white stone.
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