...is coming out.
The artist is an accomplished Mao statue carver -
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.
...and this bit, which I find pretty disgusting -
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family has charged the foundation building a monument to the civil-rights leader on the National Mall about $800,000 to use his words and image -- and at least one scholar thinks that Dr. King would find such an arrangement offensive.
The memorial is being paid for almost entirely through a fund-raising campaign led by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation.
"I don't think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family [or] any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a memorial in Washington," said Cambridge University historian David Garrow, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Dr. King. ". . . [He would've been] absolutely scandalized."
Financial documents revealed that the foundation paid $761,160 in 2007 to Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an entity run by the King family. They also showed that a $71,700 "management" fee was paid to the family estate in 2003.
As Marty said, I think the good doctor would be quite unimpressed about what is going on around his statue - rolling over in his grave comes to mind.
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As to my previous comments on the size of statues of long deceased presidents, this clip says that it even out does the two most famous DC statues in size! It is also like my earler cathederal "visual massing" comments - not only is the statue itself physically large, but the "mountain" behind it makes it overwhelming compared to the other two famous memorials.
The statue, meanwhile, will be 11ft taller than the statues in the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.
I think we will hear a lot more complaints as more information becomes nationally available. A pity since it diverts attention away from the real intent of the unveiling.
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