The Associated Press

Fri, May 9, 2008 (8:07 p.m.)

The centerpiece for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial on the National Mall has drawn criticism from a federal arts panel, which says the proposed statue looks "confrontational" and resembles the head of a socialist state more than a civil rights leader.

Models of the 28-foot tall statue depict King emerging from a chunk of granite, his arms folded in front of his chest, his legs firmly rooted, an intense gaze on his face.

But the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which reviews the design of projects in the capital area, said the design should be reworked to reflect a more sympathetic rendering of King.

Members thought "the proposed treatment of the sculpture _ as the most iconographic and central element of the memorial to Dr. King _ would be unfortunate and inappropriate as an expression of his legacy," wrote Thomas Luebke, commission secretary, in an April 25 letter to the foundation that is planning the King memorial and the National Park Service.

The panel said the statue looked "confrontational" and reflected a "genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries."

Harry Johnson, president of the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial, said a new design would be submitted June 15 that includes a "softening of Dr. King." His facial expression, for example, will be changed.

The criticism from the panel, which must approve the design in order for work to go forward, was part of a dialogue, Johnson said. But he added it would be hard to confuse the slain civil rights icon with an authoritarian figure.

"I don't think anybody could look at a statue of Dr. King and say he looks like a dictator," Johnson said.

Work is scheduled to begin this year on the memorial, to be built with $100 million in mostly private funds on the banks of the National Mall's Tidal Basin. A symbolic groundbreaking was held in 2006 with much pomp, including speeches by President Bush and a string of political leaders and civil rights figures. It will probably open to the public in two years.

The King statue, to be carved by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, will be chiseled out of a granite boulder called "The Stone of Hope." It will be the largest statue on the Mall, bigger than those at the nearby memorials to Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. Lei has made a full-size clay model in China but has not yet carved the granite statue.

The design is not the first controversy over the memorial. Critics said last year that the sculptor should be black or at least American, and that King would have been appalled by China's poor record on human rights.