Ahead of Martin Luther King, Jr. day, Hank Willis Thomas, a conceptual artist well-regarded for his public statuary, unveiled his latest creation: a $10 million, 22-feet-tall statue of MLK and his wife, Coretta Scott King, hugging after King found out he’d been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Sounds lovely, right? But Thomas’s abstracted approach is rankling many, including a member of civil rights leader’s extended family. The sculpture solely consists of the pair’s disembodied arms wrapped around each other, and some critics have opined that the final result appears phallic or just plain lumpy. “What it looks like, I’m just going to say it, a giant penis…I’m sorry, it does!” Megyn Kelly said on her show. Seneca Scott, Coretta Scott King’s cousin, wrote in Compact Magthat the sculpture “looks more like a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis than a special moment shared by the iconic couple...ten million dollars were wasted to create a masturbatory metal homage to my legendary family members — one of the all-time greatest American families.” The sculpture, The Embrace, was installed on the Boston Common due to the efforts of Embrace Boston, an organization dedicated to cultivating “racial and economic justice in Boston.” The Daily Beast reached out to Embrace Boston and the artist for comment.
