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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2014
Vol. CXXIV, No. 24
OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE CITY OF TACOMA Devoted to the Courts, Real Estate, Finance, Industrial Activities, and Publication of Legal Notices
Published Published Since Since 1890 1890
Sun King Dethroned Can Tacoma ever appreciate this piece of public art?
Article By Todd Matthews, Editor Photo Courtesy Tom Morandi Forty years ago, a young sculptor was commissioned by the City of Tacoma to create a piece of public art that might liven a run-down, two-block stretch of downtown Tacoma. It could have been an exciting time for the 32-year-old artist, Tom Morandi, who earned an MFA in sculpture at Ohio University in 1971, and had only one other major public art commission on his resume -- an arched, sleek, stainless steel sculpture originally commissioned by the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pa. It could have also been an exciting time for Tacoma, which would soon see the construction of a 25-story, 338-room Sheraton Hotel near the corner of Broadway and South 13th Street, just steps from Morandi's new sculpture. The high-rise hotel would help announce the city as a destination for travelers, and Morandi's sculpture would announce Tacoma as a city that embraced public art. What happened instead was a fit of public uproar that cast a long shadow over Morandi's "Sun King," a three-ton, 15-foot-tall, 22-foot-wide steel frame sculpture wrapped in a silicon bronze skin (pictured). "The sculpture was controversial from the beginning," Morandi recently told the Tacoma Daily Index from his home in Corvallis, Ore. "To my mind, it was never considCONTINUED ered a point of pride with ON PAGE 2 most Tacomans."
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