Thank you, Oliver!  The facile over-use of "PC" as a dismissive term has
always bothered me.  Your summary of why/how it is problematic is right on
the money. While it did not originate with Limbaugh, the accusatory cry of
"PC"  certainly has been used as an effective way to silence voices who
speak for inclusion and mindfulness of the effects of exclusion and
injustice.

While I missed the very beginning of this thread, it does seem to me
absurd to slavishly copy a photograph in creating a public sculpture.
This is especially true if the sculpture is intended not as simply a
portrait of the three individuals in the photo, but will stand for a much
larger, and more diverse, group of people.

And thank you, Gayle-Indigo for reminding us of the constructedness of
race and racial categories. How do we "know" that the people in the photo
are "white" or "caucasian"?  For that matter how do we "know" they were
all born biological males?  As long as assumptions based on appearances
continue to be both automatic and troublingly salient in our culture, we
should question just how our symbolic -and public- representations
reinforce them.

This is not simply a question of artistic license, of how the artist uses
many sources -perhaps many photos- to fill one sculpture with historic
meaning and symbolic life.  It is a larger question of how, once made and
installed and quasi-permanent setting, a sculptural portrayal can shape
the imagination and create (or not) possibilities for the future.

As long as the category "firefighter" continues to be filled, in
day-to-day life as well as in the fixed and enduring moment of bronze, by
people whose "whiteness" and "maleness" is a key identifying feature, the
harder it will continue to be for children whose non-whiteness and
non-maleness is apparent to imagine themselves one day filling that role.
And the harder it will be for "white males" to imagine themselves working
side-by-side simply with people: persons of any gender and of any
"color."



Annette A. Wilson
_________________________                            _____________________
                          The University of Michigan
College of Architecture and Urban Planning  :           Research Assistant
 -Joint Programs-                           :    Interdisciplinary Program
3+ Master of Architecture    and            :         in Feminist Practice
Doctoral Program in Architecture            :              2125  Lane Hall
        Environment and Behavior            :                 734/763-3589
__________________________________________________________________________

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Oliver V Hirsch wrote:

> This is an amazing, and often appalling, string.
>
> First -- who cares about replicating this image with precision?  Did you
> want a bronze version of a photograph?  Or do you think that perhaps what
> we have here is a s-y-m-b-o-l; a symbolic rendering of the heroic actions
> of those who lived and those who died, but all of whom we New Yorkers
> count as heroes.  New York is a wonderfully diverse community, and, to
> its credit, its Fire Department has over the past decades come to reflect
> that diversity.  Is this monument to be a bronze memento of a great
> photographic moment? Who needs it?!  The point is to memorialize the New
> York Fire Department, and the spirit of brave selflessness that its
> members have demonstrated.
>
> Second, to use a glib sobriquet like "pc" to dismiss the impulse toward
> making this symbol universal, and then think that you have said something
> profound is absurd.  This is a limbaughism used to set the stage to
> snatch back the hard-won advances of the just struggles of women and
> people of color over the past couple of decades -- the centuries old
> struggles of people historically at the bottom and the back.  Your
> intended dismissal is intellectually lazy, irresponsible, and that's the
> kind interpretation.
>
> We don't need another statue of white men representing all of humanity --
> or all of the New York Fire Department for that matter.  If this
> particular image meets more of this kind of backward opposition, no
> problem: we have many, many images of heroes in action, and we should
> pick a representative one.
>
> Oliver Hirsch
> Hirsch & Associates Fine Art Services, Inc.
> New York

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