This is a classic example of public art that the public wants
and values being denigrated by the "art experts" who
view the public as... "a mass of bloated ignoramuses desperately
needing to be jolted out of their self-satisfied and stuporous
complacency by one kind of outrageous gesture or another."
WDM |
The Promised Land
This 3,000 pound bronze by David Manuel, was commissioned
for $200,000 to commemorate the sesquicentennial by the Oregon
Trail Coordinating Council. It was a gift to the City of Portland,
along with $50,000 to build a plaza around it. But the Public
Art Advisory Committee of the Metropolitan Arts Commission voted
unanimously to reject the piece, and, a short while later, so
did the Commission itself.
Henry Sayre, a professor of art at Oregon State University refers
to the work as "kitsch" and when asked to comment on
the sculpture said, "If the commission voted to accept the
piece, it would be a "divisive gesture." It represents
as lily-white an American family as you can get in bronze --
Dad, a Kenny Rogers look-alike, Mom, all misty-eyed, tucked neatly
under Dad's protecting arm, and the son in front of them both,
Bible in hand-such a nauseatingly idealized view of what the
Oregon Trail really meant to the region that I also called it
a Hallmark Card."
Excuse me Mr. Sayer, but the pioneers on the Oregon Trail were
in fact mostly white families who did carry bibles with them.
Give me kitsch any day, if the alternative is modern art crap.
Viewer polls on local television stations indicated that 90
percent of the public felt that the Arts Commission was wrong
in turning the piece down |
