Black Sculptor Was Dropped from Head of King Project

WASHINGTON — A black American sculptor was retained a year ago to create a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for the national King memorial, but was abruptly dropped from the project in favor of a Chinese sculptor.

Selection of the Chinese artist, Lei Yixin, has stirred controversy and has been the object of vocal criticism by Atlanta painter Gilbert Young, who charged Wednesday that the failure to choose an African-American sculptor for the memorial was a "smack in the face" to black Americans.

"It's an insult to me and to all black people," Young said.

Changing sculptors was a "business decision," said a spokeswoman for the Martin Luther King Memorial Project Foundation.

Officials of the foundation announced at a news conference Tuesday that four construction and architectural firms had been selected to build the memorial on Washington's National Mall. They confirmed that King's statue will be carved from Chinese granite.

Yixin, whose selection was announced last October, flew to Washington from China to attend the news conference and posed for pictures with members of the construction team.

However, foundation records show that Edward Dwight of Denver was originally named "artist of record."

Dwight has created several statues of King for memorials around the country. He was the sculptor of the Hank Aaron statue — of Georgia marble — that was unveiled in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in 1982.

He said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he had created a sculpture of King for the memorial and was led to believe it had the foundation's approval.

It was to be carved from Chinese granite by Yixin, who was originally hired as his assistant, he said.

But, Dwight said, after several executives of the foundation traveled to China last fall, they returned with a new model for a King statue, created by Yixin.

He said he was informed he was no longer the official sculptor, and had turned down several appeals by the foundation to remain on.

"What can we do to keep you in the family?" he said foundation executives asked him during a heated meeting here in November.

But he said he did not like the Yixin statue or the way in which he was replaced as "artist of record" without notice.

The sculpture depicts King as emerging from a large block of stone with his arms crossed, wearing a bulky suit.

"The thing has got to look like King, and it doesn't look like him," Dwight said. "He has him with this big bulky coat on and with his legs far apart. King never looked like that in his life, man. This man was a suave, silk-suit-wearing dude."

A spokeswoman for the foundation, Dina Curtis, said the organization, which is trying to raise $100 million to build the memorial, understood "Mr. Dwight's frustration and his opinions about the memorial."

"It's really unfortunate that only one side of the story has been heard," she said.

Asked for the other side, she replied: "The other side of the story is we're trying to raise money to build a memorial for Dr. King."

She added that replacing Dwight with Yixin "was a business decision by the executives of the foundation and it was endorsed by the board of directors."

Young, who has an Internet blog devoted to questioning the decision to hire the Chinese sculptor, said Dwight "is so much of a gentleman that he's never said anything about it and has not been willing to let the public know what was done to him."

However, Young posted on his blog, kingisours.com, draft copies of correspondence between Dwight and the foundation, stating in May that Dwight would be "artist of record."

The letter of commitment obtained by Young also stipulated that Dwight was to "assist the foundation, as necessary, on other technical aspects," including selection of material to be used for the memorial.

In that role, Dwight said, he accompanied foundation executives to a show in St. Paul, Minn., last summer to view demonstrations by stone carvers and to select one to put his creation in granite.

"I don't work in stone," he said, adding that Yixin was one of the carvers the King memorial group watched at work.

"He worked all the time," Dwight said. "When the carvers took a break, he kept working. When they went to lunch, he kept working. At the end of the day, he kept working.

"The people from the foundation said they were impressed with his work ethic," Dwight said. "They kept telling me, 'This looks like our man.' "

A few months later foundation officials went to China "to select the stone," and when they returned to Washington they had also selected Yixin as artist of record, Dwight said.

Young said that as a Chinese citizen, Yixin cannot interpret the meaning King had for black Americans.

"You go to any country and look at their memorials and they are created by their own people," Young said. "In China, they don't go to another country and say, 'put us up a monument to Mao Zedong,' and you're an Italian."

Dwight, whose father played second base for the Kansas City Monarchs of the old Negro Baseball League, was an Air Force bomber pilot who was chosen for astronaut training in 1963.

He was not selected for the astronaut corps. After leaving the Air Force, he obtained a masters degree in fine arts and became a sculptor.

On the Web:

Dwight's other work: www.eddwight.com

King memorial: www.mlkmemorial.com