Martin Luther King, jr. Made in China.

The 30-foot-tall granite statue of the slain civil rights leader — the first person who is not a president or fallen soldier to be honored with a major memorial on the mall — is the centerpiece of a $120 million, four-acre memorial to Dr. King.

What a beautiful work of art, gee i wonder who paid for it..

Mr. Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader's son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha

Amazing. But it gets better.

Dr. King's statue is to be shipped here in a crate that supposedly says 'Made in China.' That's just obscene," Winfrey Young says

So this statue was not only made by someone who isnt an American, but was mostly SHIPPED here from china.

This made in china statue was $120,000,000.00 I would have thought it would have been cheaper considering there is probably a factory with thousands of child workers pumping these things out in mass production From our pockets to some one elses in another country.

What a disgusting turn of events, so we don't make statues in America anymore?
I know we don't make buses anymore.



Source: Washington Post

Source: Global Post

Pre-decision related post: Above Top Secret

Just like everything else in America, made in China. We owe China our firstborns and then some,

reply to post by sicksonezer0


I assume they commissioned the artist because they liked his work....either that or he had already made the statue, and they just bought it from him.

I suppose I'd be mad if they commissioned it from China simply because it was cheaper....but with a $120,000,000.00 dollar price tag, I don't think that explanation works.......

Somehow I doubt Mr. King would be bigoted against a Chinese man making a Statue....and it's not as if there is some mad rush on Chinese sculptors, and this is hurting the U.S. sculptor market or something.....

He's an artist.....this is the sale of a statue by an individual artist to someone else....it looks like a nice stature (if perhaps a bit overpriced).....I don't see the sale of one piece of art as hurting the U.S. all that much. I guess I fail to see the outrage here.

I mean it's not as if some foreigner had built the Statue of Liberty or anything.....oh wait......yeah, that's right, it was a foreigner that designed the Statue of Liberty....

Funny they couldn't find a Black firm/man to create this?............not even one in the US?

I guess I shouldnt tell you about the Statue of Liberty...

You know I just looked at 30 pictures of this statue on yahoo news and it is absolutely beautiful!!!!

The face is very realistic , but I didn’t care for the straight lines on the rest of it, and the right fore arm dimples, but I give the overall set up of the surrounding environment an A.

As for it being made in china and the price tag, at first it did make me a bit mad/sad and like WTF, but Martin Luther king was for all men to be treated equal and love n peace…”no lines” blur it for a moment if you will.


Ps: how is it mostly shipped here? Did it get a flight somewhere along the line? I didn’t bother to read the links (maybe I should )

reply to post by ImmortalThought


The statue of liberty was a gift from another country (French "Intellectuals") ,

This MLK statue was commissioned by an american group (Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc) that was funded by our government, and private donations.

BIG DIFFERENCE.

"The memorial cost $120 million..."

They must have used a DOD contractor.


"...(memorial includes)14 quotations from King's speeches and writings."

I wonder if they included this one:

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today "my own government." "

Originally posted by futuretense
Funny they couldn't find a Black firm/man to create this?............not even one in the US?

edit on 22-8-2011 by futuretense because: (no reason given)

Its even stupider given the fact that a noted black sculptor led an actual protest against this. Result? Nothing.

solely on artistic ability.[64]

Gilbert Young, an African American artist known for a work of art entitled He Ain't Heavy, led a protest against the decision to hire Lei by launching the website King Is Ours, which demanded that an African American artist be used for the monument.[65] Human-rights activist and arts advocate Ann Lau and American stone-carver Clint Button joined Young and national talk-show host Joe Madison in advancing the protest when the use of Chinese granite was discovered.[66] Lau decried the human rights record of the Chinese government and asserted that the granite would be mined by workers forced to toil in unsafe and unfair conditions.[67] Button argued that the $10 million in federal money that has been authorized for the King project required it to be subject to an open bidding process.[68]

The memorial's design team visited China in October 2006 to inspect potential granite to be used.[69] The project's foundation has argued that the quality of the Chinese granite exceeds that which can be found in the United States.[70]

en.wikipedia.org...

That bit about the quality of the granite in the US is pretty funny. I mean, all the other artists who made granite monuments in the country over the last 300 years must have been really missing out on the "good stuff" from China...

source:

Does anyone else think that MLK looks like Mao in that statue? Glorious people build glorious statue.

Funny, we can in-source sculptures from Communist China, Outsource labor to Communist China, yet I can't smoke a cigar from Cuba because "they're Communist". Go figure.

Actually I find it mildly comical that a communist country would agree to carve a statue of a prominent civil rights leader. I guess MLK wouldn't mind in the end....he's dead aint he? yea...he don't care.....

I honestly don't care where it was made. If they wanted a statue they got it. Overall it is a very nice peice of art work and i'm not going to complain about a statue that honors that man's name. He is a "World wide Hero" and he is a influence to a great many...

Check out this video below, the artist explains some of his views on this matter. (about half way through the video 3:20-5:00)