Thursday, February 17, 2005

Updates

(Photo from the ananova.com website)
For those of you who were readers of the original Stone Pilgrim blog over at salon (blogs.salon.com/0003346), I have good news. Yesterday's sculpture news around the world offered follow ups to at least two stories.
The first is the latest episode in the Beheaded Maggie Thatcher saga. If you'll remember, the marble statue was decapitated in 2002 by an enraged theater producer by the name of Paul Kelleher. He did it as a political statement and spent 3 months in jail for it in spite of two hung juries and an online amnesty petition that called for his exoneration. There were even those who hailed his act as a blow for artistic excellence.
Now Maggie has been restored and is being exhibited in a glass case in the London Guildhall. The neck has been reinforced with a steel rod to stave off similar results should there be future attacks. The obvious need not be stated here.
Next- from the modern to the ancient. A mayor on the Greek Island of Rhodes is backing a project to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the ancient wonders of the world. The new piece will be 33 meters (around 100 ft) high and be made of brass. (Why brass?) Though Nikos Kotziamanis, the sculptor, made the original proposal for Rhodes town where the original piece stood, he has accepted the land and permissions from another site, a resort town, which has a fairly dicey reputation at the moment. Faliraki, after all, is a resort where nearly anything goes, and British soccer hoodlums on vacation roam the streets strutting their stuff, but the mayor wants to attract the "right type" of tourist and hopes the Colossus will lure them in. The project will cost around 100 million euros, but should pay for itself within a few years, of all goes well.
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