Slight Revision for Criticized Martin Luther King Statue

WASHINGTON — Organizers have made only slight changes to the design of a national memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. that a key approval committee criticized as "confrontational."

The foundation in charge of the memorial submitted new plans last week for a 28-foot granite statue of the slain civil rights leader that is to be built adjacent to the National Mall in Washington. The federal panel that must sign off on the design, the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, will take up the revisions at a hearing next week.

The commission demanded changes to the sculpture after its members voiced concern in April that the "colossal scale" resembled statues of dictators in totalitarian regimes. "The Commission members found that the colossal scale and Social Realist style of the proposed statue recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries," the panel's secretary, Thomas Luebke, wrote in a letter to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. The design, he wrote, "features a stiffly frontal image, static pose, confrontational in character." The commission also complained that the image of King looked as if it had been "affixed" to its base — called the "Stone of Hope" — rather than "emerging" from it, as had been reflected in the original renderings.

The proposed statue and the panel's criticism have sparked a spirited debate about King's legacy and how he should be depicted in a national memorial.

The revised design makes no changes to King's pose or facial expression; he remains upright, facing forward with his arms crossed in front of his chest. The new design instead appears aimed at addressing the thematic concerns surrounding King's image in relation to the Stone of Hope. It enhances the base of the stone so that King's body is cut off above the knee, rather than below. It also adds a rougher surface to the bottom of King's suit jacket so that he appears to be rising out of the stone rather than merely placed atop it, as the commission suggested.

The submission does not contain a written explanation of the changes, and a spokeswoman for the foundation, Rica Orszag, declined to comment. "We listened to what they had to say, and we made our submission," she said. The commission also declined to comment before next week's hearing.

A reporter was allowed to view the revised design at the commission's office in Washington, but copies could not be made. The commission has broadly approved several other components of the memorial, including quotations from King, landscaping, and lighting.

The foundation has drawn complaints over its decision to hire a Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, to create the King statue, which is the centerpiece of the memorial. The New York Sun reported last month that the foundation is under federal investigation by the Interior Department over whether it needed to follow procurement rules involving competitive bidding.

The memorial is funded by a combination of public and private dollars, and the foundation is holding a major fund-raiser in Atlanta on June 19, the same day the Commission on Fine Arts holds a hearing on the design.