Exiled Art

I wish there had been some advanced notice that Partisans (seen here) was being removed from Boston Common. It sucked to read in today's Boston Globe that it's already gone. Had I known it was being removed, I would've gone down and taken a couple of photos. According to the article, the statue was moved to Boston Common in 1983. I was in third grade when that happened, so in my mind the statue has been there "forever" and was as much a part of Boston Common as any of the other statues.

The Globe article states:

It has been called everything from a timeless reminder of the ''human toll of fighting for what one believes in" to merely depressing. Now, it is gone.

''Partisans," the controversial sculpture of five emaciated, bedraggled horsemen that has been at the foot of Boston Common for nearly a quarter-century, has been exiled to storage in South Boston, where it awaits shipment to its owner in San Francisco.

Granted, I'm no art expert, but the best thing about the statue is how striking it is. The message it conveys and the feelings it evokes are part of what make it so powerful and so wonderful on display. It's truly a shame to see how small minds have forced it out. I guess San Francisco will be just that much better once it receives our "gift."

Comments

[whit]

This is one of the more disturbing articles (in the Globe) I have read lately. The idea that those dimwits know better than all of us what ought to be on the Common or not is maddening.

[Alan]

There seem to be so many occasions of this type of event - a major piece of art being removed without consultation with the local people who, although they may have seen it every day for the past x years, have come to love it and regard it as their own. I just hope in this case that it ends up in a place where people can see it.