Martin Luther King Sculpture Faces Obstacles

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The creation of a sculpture to be part of a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on Washington D.C.'s Tidal Basin is moving forward slowly because of mounting complaints, the Washington Post reports. The sculpture is planned as the centerpiece of a $100 million memorial project, funded largely by private donations from the Washington D.C.-based Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, and will rise 2 1/2 stories high, carved from a large chunk of granite called the Stone of Hope.

The current incarnation calls for a 28-foot-tall King with his arms folded, looming over visitors. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a federal agency that advises the government on public design and aesthetics around Washington D.C., is calling for the proposal to be reworked, saying that the style of the sculpture is too confrontational and too reminiscent of the Social Realist style of former totalitarian states. The memorial project cannot move forward without the commission's approval.

The original design was approved by the commission in 2006, the same year that the memorial plan was approved by Congress and a groundbreaking ceremony was held. The commission claims that the original design was a more subtle image of King, who was shown waist up, emerging from the rock. Concerns were voiced at a hearing on April 17 and in an April 25 letter to the foundation.

The project also came under fire last year when Lei Yixin, a Chinese master sculptor known for his works of figures like Mao Zedong, was chosen to work on the monument. On May 1, members of the National Capital Planning Commission, another group that must approve the project, voiced their own set of complaints about the depiction of King.

Though a model of the statue has already been built in China, chief architect Ed Jackson Jr. met with the project's artistic consultants this week to discuss how to address the commissions' concerns. Construction on the sculpture is expected to begin this year and be finished next year.