New MLK statue in Boston (which I hate) has some lessons for Philadelphia

BOSTON — I was mad.

Apoplectic, even. The fact that a disembodied sculpture supposedly honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been unveiled in Boston last Friday was upsetting. It is an abstract piece of art depicting his and his wife’s arms, but not their heads or torsos. Some critics say it reminds them of a giant penis; after Leslie Jones joked on The Daily Show that it reminds her of a sex act, it’s too hard for me to see it any other way. The memes on social media have been outrageous. I hate the idea of King’s legacy being tainted this way.

Sculptor Hank Willis Thomas, based in Brooklyn, says he was inspired by the iconic 1964 photo of King with his arms wrapped around his wife, Coretta Scott King, after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. That’s one of my favorite photos of King of all time. It’s one of the few that readily come to mind in which he is depicted being completely joyful — triumphant, even — and locked in an embrace with his wife. That image is sacrosanct. It’s a magical moment to memorialize. But the idea that Thomas would do so without including the rest of their bodies disturbs me.

Some people love it, such as noted antiracism activist Ibram X. Kendi, who called it “breathtaking.” Members of King’s family celebrated the unveiling (although a cousin of Coretta Scott King also sees a penis).

I felt as if I were missing something, so I jumped in the car and headed to Massachusetts. That’s how I wound up in Boston Common, America’s oldest public park, Wednesday morning, staring up at the 19-ton bronze homage to King and his legacy.

At first, I walked around The Embrace, wordlessly taking it all in. Lots of visitors had puzzled expressions on their faces. Others were smiling and standing inside The Embrace to have their picture taken. Someone had left flowers.

A group of children was visiting at the same time. “It looks creepy,” I heard one of them say. I kind of thought the same thing. My eyes must have betrayed how I was feeling, because a passerby asked me, “Do you like it?” I shook my head, no.

David Evans, who lives in Boston’s South End, told me he didn’t, either. “I love the man and what he stood for, but I don’t like the art,” he said. “It doesn’t represent, I don’t think, what he was all about as well. It’s also subject to a lot of bad connotations of holding something that’s unpleasant, to contorting in a way that would also be lewd to talk about. But I can also see the power of dedicating something to the relationship between the Kings, but this is a beheaded version of that.”

If nothing else, The Embrace is provocative. Art is supposed to make you feel things and move you, and this piece certainly does that. As I walked around the statue, I went from feeling appalled to having a grudging acceptance of what the artist was trying to accomplish. I noticed from one angle that one of King‘s arms and his wife’s shoulder appear to be in the shape of a heart; that made me smile. An inscription on a nearby wall reads: “Love is such a powerful force. It’s there for everyone to embrace — that kind of unconditional love for all of humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in.”

“I think that structurally and artistically, it’s beautifully done on three sides,” said Deborah Hart, a Boston-based artist who visited with her husband, Kevin. “I wish there were stairs that you could step up in the middle and be part of the embrace. I think that would have been even more powerful.”

“Boston is in great need of this,” Elliot Bostwick Davis, a 2022 Advanced Leadership fellow at Harvard, told me. “It’s a city that’s suffered from division, and racial division especially, even though it has such a veneer of the abolitionist movement as part of its history. There were many fine abolitionists, but I do think it’s remained a very divided city.”

Philadelphia, we have to learn from Boston’s King sculpture debacle.

Ours is a city full of public art, with more projects in the works — most notably, a statue of Harriet Tubman, which is already mired in questions and controversy. With any future work — especially one that costs $10 million, such as the MLK Boston statue — the city has to keep a close eye. Preview the proposed piece from all angles, run it by focus groups filled with people from all walks of life, make sure there isn’t some element that takes away from the larger message.

And if the art refers to a specific moment in a person’s life, we need to make sure to thoroughly explain it. That didn’t happen in Boston, and the tribute would benefit from more information to help people understand what it is that they are viewing. I realized this when a student who said she was from Russia asked me what photo it was based upon. I pulled it up on my phone for her. That was her first time ever seeing the picture.

Art should be provocative. And King certainly was; although we lionize him now, that was far from the case when he was alive. A 1966 Gallup poll revealed that 63% of America viewed him negatively. But he wasn’t something to mock. And a whole lot of folks besides Leslie Jones are laughing at this tribute.

Still, after seeing the statue in person, my initial negative reaction softened. At the heart of what King was about is love. If even just some people can visit The Embrace and feel some of the love he felt for Coretta in the embrace captured by the statue, then maybe its $10 million price tag wasn’t a total waste.