MLK’s statue in Florida doesn’t look like him — and residents are not pleased

No, we are not back to the Black Lives Matter protests against statues or even the attacks on monuments after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are in Winter Park, Central Florida, where last month, as the New York Times reported, a statue was unveiled in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. who was arrested in Florida itself - in St. Augustine - in 1964, during one of the many nonviolent demonstrations against segregation that contributed to the signing of the Civil Rights Act. Founded as a posh resort destination in the late 1800s, Winter Park is located just north of Orlando. Between luxury residences and historic neighborhoods, it is home to museums, one of the state's oldest universities and is known in the area for its exclusive events and extremely involved and active citizenry. It was in front of these citizens that the statue that created the controversy was unveiled this summer. Almost three meters tall and made of bronze, it depicts King holding a book in his left hand while the desra points upward, as in the speech he gave in Washington in 1963, from which comes the famous quote "I have a dream." 

The work is by sculptor and former financier Andrew Luy, it is called Ripple, and all of Florida now hates it, so much so that this story has gone from the local news to the pages of the national press in a matter of weeks. Shoes, head and arm too big: the proportions are wrong, and then the statue does not have nice features, it is personal, unrealistic and above all it does not look like King. The co-founder of Essence, a cult pop magazine for the black community, Jonathan Blount, called it "clunky" and "caricatured," in front of the Winter Park city committee. The monument is located inside Martin Luther King Jr. Park, in the space christened "Unity Corner."

There is another issue, perhaps even more important for those who would like this monument out of the county: it was not the residents who selected Luy, nor who wrote the guidelines for its implementation, but the MLK/Shady Park Planning Committee, a citizen committee that oversaw the process and approved the design. According to some sources, the design had also been shared with the King family, who said they were pleased with the statue.

This is a complex affair, to be counted among the many misfortunes of King's statues in history (at times one could almost speak of a curse), and among the many episodes that, in recent years, have made us rethink the twentieth-century idea of a monument. Most of all, however, this is a story that speaks to us about public art and the relationship between artistic interpretation and community expectations, as well as the value of patronage in art history.

In the meantime, on the thousand open brackets around Ripple, Winter Park Mayor Sheila DeCiccio cut it short: "Maybe it just didn't come out the way everybody hoped to". The "fixes" to the monument requested by citizens are by no means a foregone conclusion, given the investment (we're talking about $500,000).