Panel reviews MLK memorial revisions

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts indicated Thursday that they would approve minor changes to the design of the forthcoming Martin Luther King Jr. monument on the National Mall.

The panel had asked Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin to make changes after it complained that the initial pose — King emerging from granite with arms folded across his chest — was “too confrontational,” recalling monuments to dictators rather than a nonviolent civil rights leader.

The sculptor revised his 28-foot-tall clay model of the proposed statue, smoothing its brow and raising surrounding rock to the figure’s knee to make it look less menacing and more active. The arts panel signaled approval of the adjustments, requesting a plaster figure model and layout diagrams of the surrounding park for review at its July meeting.

“This is how people will remember Dr. King for ages to come, so we want to be careful,” Commission Vice Chairwoman Pamela Nelson said Thursday.

The commission helps oversee designs for parks, monuments and memorials in D.C. Its sanction is the final hurdle to construction, which the King memorial foundation expects to be completed in 2009.

The monument will be the first on the Mall of a minister or African American, and also the first dedicated to a man who was not president.

Criticism and revision forms the “tedious process of give and take” for building a new national monument, said memorial foundation President Harry Johnson. He stressed that the foundation was pleased with the panel’s reaction and was ready to move forward.

Including revenue from a Thursday fundraising dinner in King’s hometown of Atlanta, the foundation has raised $94.5 million from private donors for the $100 million project. The U.S. Congress and the president authorized the memorial in 1998. It will be carved mostly of Georgia granite.