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News & ArtsTuesday, August 23, 2011
Visual Art MLK, Tommy Hilfiger, and China
Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 1:48 PM
It took 25 years to get it done, and it was finally unveiled yesterday, made of granite and words and MLK's giant folded arms. Its dedication ceremony will be Saturday, the anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963.
Today, Robin Givhan on The Daily Beast clarifies: Tommy Hilfiger is not a racist.
The King Memorial has been created through the largesse of a host of corporate donors—from Disney and Boeing to the NBA and BP. The biggest sponsorship commitment comes from General Motors. But while retailers such as Walmart and Macy’s have offered support, Hilfiger is the project’s only major fashion sponsor.
“I thought we should be involved as an American company,” he says. “Our image has always been rooted in freedom and America. This memorial is an iconic expression of that.”
And in other matters that have to do with race, class, art, and product, recall the fact that the sculpture was made in China. When the artist was chosen, the Washington Post reported,
A former adviser for the memorial has accused the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation Inc. of promoting Lei to head artist in the hopes of getting a $25 million donation from the Chinese government to make up for a shortfall in funding.
Visitors enter the memorial by walking through a split boulder called the Mountain of Despair.
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