A Dream Deferred?

Critics cried foul last year when a 28-foot sculpture of slain civil rights leader Martin Lurther King Jr., proposed for the National Mall's Tidal Basin, was commissioned to a Chinese sculptor.

Now, a powerful arts commission says the colossal sculpture is too confrontational and reminiscent of totalitarian states, according to a Washington Post report.

The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which consults the government on public design projects, recommends that the sculpture to be reworked. No federal public project can go forward without the commission's approval.

The sculpture "features a stiffly frontal image, static in pose, confrontational in character," commission secretary Thomas Luebke wrote to the project's organizers, according to the Post. The commission suggested the sculpture be reworked in form and modeling.

The $100 million monument to King, more than 20 years in the planning, depicts the civil rights leader with arms folded, emerging from a giant chunk of granite. It's a reference to a line from his "I Have a Dream" speech: "hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

When Chinese artist Lei Yixin was selected for the projects, critics said an African American sculptor would have been a better choice.

"Everybody has this problem with how Dr. King is represented," Ed Dwight, a black sculptor, told the Post. "You can't satisfy anybody, because everybody remembers him in a different way."

by Alfonso Serrano F.