< Choice of Martin Luther King Jr. Sculptor Questioned

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Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday

August 18, 2007 - SCOTT SIMON, host:

There's a controversy over who a commission has chosen as the sculptor of record for the Martin Luther King Memorial set to open on the National Mall. Lei Yixin has carved about 150 large marble statues in China. Over the past decades, cities had been allowed to raise memorials to local leaders, not just Mao Tse-tung. Mr. Lei has sculpted a few Maos too.

Some have criticized the choice of Mr. Lei as outsourcing. They asked why an American artist, especially an African-American artist, wasn't given the commission. Sculptor Ed Dwight feels he was unfairly cast aside. Mr. Dwight has not worked much in massive slabs of marble, but he's cast hundreds of bronze statues, including the Henry Aaron that stands in front of the Atlanta Braves Stadium and the Underground Railroad memorials along the Detroit River.

Mr. Dwight cast a series of small statues of Dr. King for major donors to the King Memorial, now feels strung along by the commission. He insists that Mr. Lei's race has nothing to do with his criticism. But listen to this clip from an interview he gave to NPR's NEWS & NOTES. Is Ed Dwight judging Mr. Lei by the quality of his sculpture or the color of his skin?

(Soundbite of archived NPR clip)

Mr. ED DWIGHT (Sculptor): Other black folks - and I know how they look, I know how they act; I know their anatomy. And here's a guy in China that's never been around any black people before in his life, and he's expected to capture the essence of one of our greatest leaders. And it doesn't make any sense to me.

SIMON: Lei Yixin is 53, and he's had a tough instructive of life. He was one of millions of Chinese teenagers banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, spent seven years doing stoop labor on a collective farm to abolish the bourgeois influences of his education.

To keep his creative side alive, Mr. Lei started drawing - in secret. He openly became an artist when China began to change. A delegation from the King Memorial Commission saw some of his works on display last year in St. Paul. They admired his statues and were impressed by his experience. Few, if any, American sculptors get the chance to carve so many massive figures.

Now, it's tempting to think that the King Memorial Commission chose Mr. Lei to symbolize that Dr. King's message leapt across oceans to inspire an artist who'd once struggled in bondage.

But Harry Johnson, a Houston lawyer who is head of the commission, says their reasoning was not so sentimental, and maybe that shows how much Dr. King's message of seeing humanity instead of color has become a part of our lives.

Lei was not chosen because of Dr. King's message, he says. Lei was chosen because he can carve stone that's 30 feet high.

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