He rises 11 feet high, cast in bronze, carved in metaphor. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. frequently used metaphor as an orator, and a new statue of him in Winter Park, Fla., does the same, with shoes, left arm and head all slightly enlarged.
His body language suggests that he is at ease, holding a thick book in one hand and waving with the other. Even his blazer and pants have a relaxed quality to them, with realistic-looking wrinkles.
Winter Park, a suburb of Orlando, last month celebrated the unveiling of the $500,000 installation, which was to be the crowning glory of its 23-acre Martin Luther King Jr. Park.
But Dr. King’s likeness is being contested here, following a pattern of earlier memorials of him, including the one on the National Mall in Washington.
Judging any work of art is subjective, but this is magnified when it is a statue of one of the best-known Americans of the 20th century and, in this case, of a Black man amid a broader landscape of white founding fathers, Civil War generals and philanthropists.
Some critics have pointed to the statue’s disproportionate head, shoes and arms. Dr. King’s shoes were made slightly larger, to evoke the big shoes he had to fill; his left arm was bulked up, to underscore the weight and power of the untitled book he holds; and his head was slightly enlarged, to be better seen, according to the sculptor, Andrew Luy of Huntsville, Ala.
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