WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The design for the centerpiece statue of a memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. on the National Mall has drawn criticism from a federal arts panel that said the planned depiction of King more resembles the head of a socialist state than a civil rights leader.

Models of the proposed 28-foot tall statue depict King emerging from a large chunk of granite, his arms folded in front of his chest, his legs firmly rooted, an intense gaze on his face.

But the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which reviews the design of projects in the capital area, said in an April 25 letter that the large statue looked "confrontational" and reflected "a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." The panel said the design should be reworked to reflect a more sympathetic rendering of King.

Commission members thought "the proposed treatment of the sculpture - as the most iconographic and central element of the memorial to Dr. King - would be unfortunate and inappropriate as an expression of his legacy," wrote Thomas Luebke, commission secretary, in a letter to the foundation that is planning the King memorial and the National Park Service.

Harry Johnson, president of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial, said a new design would be submitted June 15 that includes a "softening of Dr. King." His facial expression, for example, will be changed.

The criticism from the panel, which must approve the design in order for work to go forward, was part of an ongoing dialogue over the memorial, Johnson said. But he added it would be hard to confuse the slain civil rights icon with an authoritarian figure.

"I don't think anybody could look at a statue of Dr. King and say he looks like a dictator," Johnson said.

Work is scheduled to begin this year on the memorial, to be built with $100 million in mostly private funds on the banks of the National Mall's Tidal Basin. A symbolic groundbreaking was held in 2006 with much pomp, including speeches by President Bush and a string of political leaders and civil rights figures. It will likely be open to the public in two years.

The King statue, to be carved by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, will be chiseled out of a granite boulder called "The Stone of Hope." It will be the largest statue on the Mall, bigger than those at the nearby memorials to Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. Lei has made a full-sized clay model in China, but has not yet carved the granite statue.

The design is not the first controversy over the memorial. Critics said last year that the sculptor should be black or at least American, and that King would have been appalled by China's poor record on human rights.

Luebke said in an interview that the Commission on Fine Arts was shown a different rendering in 2006. In that design, less of King's body projected from the stone and his head was slightly tilted, as if pensive. The commission largely approved of the design because King appeared to be an organic part of the rock, named after a phrase in one of his speeches.

Yet in the updated rendering, King's body is more free standing, his stance is more firm, the look on his face more stern than in initial drawings.

"It looks like he has been affixed to the Stone of Hope, as opposed to growing out if it," Luebke said.

The initial design was submitted before a sculptor had been selected, but it did include the crossed arms, Johnson said. And he said the depiction, including the serious expression, is true to a photo taken of the civil rights leader in his office.

"He is definitely looking as if he finished writing or meditating or thinking about something," he said.

Comments from Examiner Readers

10:11 PM MST on Sun., May. 11, 2008 re: "Arts panel criticizes MLK statue design for DC memorial"

Examiner Reader said:
Who are these members of the Federal Arts Panel and is the metaphor of a determined, Dr. King emerging from a chunk of granite totally lost on them? The body language evokes an intelligent man who pondered the destiny of millions of people around the world. To me the piece conveys that he had a strength and conviction that was grounded and solid. Just who does the new, reworked version of King have to be rendered �more sympathetic� for? African Americans? Or is it that the power of the man has been so successfully captured in this sculpture that his spirit still comes through to challenge those ignorant forces of racism and ignorance and it�s making some people quite uncomfortable? It does have a quality of confronting the viewer, but conceptually I think this is why it works. That �stance� a symbol of the man's principles and how he confronted the issues head on. If the viewer is having a problem with this, they should look at what's really in THEIR hearts. Renee Stout, a DC arti

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