Tim Krohn
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Give Piece a chance
We need a reconciliation process in Mankato.
No, not with the Indians. Already did that. Coming together with the Dakota after the long-standing scars of the 1862 war wasn’t that hard once we decided we should get along.
No, I’m talking about a reconciliation with the Mankato Piece.
The steel-girdered sculpture isn’t going away. At this point, it really can’t. Even if you hate it, it’s too much a part of the city’s history and fabric to send to the scrap yard now. It’s like the uncle who gets drunk at family events and tells the same bad jokes. He’s part of the family and you have to get along.
The Mankato Piece is in the news and again being disparaged after the City Council narrowly approved spending $61,000 to take the structure out of storage and re-assemble it in the new Riverside Park near Old Town.
Which sounds like a lot of money for a piece of artwork the city originally paid $9,400 for in 1968. But it’s actually about right. In today’s dollars, that $9,400 would be about $58,000.
This is the third time the Piece, which was built by the late Dale Eldred, has been moved. Most recently it was upended when the new Hilton Garden Inn was built.
Those who don’t get warm fuzzies when they see the Mankato Piece should realize things really could be a lot worse.
There is the sculpture called “Big Baby” of — you guessed it — a big baby. The 7-foot-tall Fiberglass sculpture of a distressed-looking tot is in the DeCordova sculpture park in Massachusetts.
You may not particularly like the Mankato Piece but at least it doesn’t creep you out every time you look at it.
When it comes to weird, bad or disturbing public art, the Mankato Piece isn’t even in the running.
There’s a 35-foot Damien Hirst sculpture in London of a woman, stomach half removed to show a fetus. In Vancouver, a church, upside down on a steeple, greets visitors. In Paris, Cesar Baldaccini’s “An Ode to a Thumb” features a 100-foot-tall thumb in a city park. And in London, Klaus Weber sculpted something called “The Big Giving,” a lava-like black blob topped with a man’s head with water gushing out of his mouth like vomit.
So give the Mankato Piece a break. It at least makes a statement — a tribute to the “urban renewal” and wonder of modern construction possible in the 1960s.
And Eldred was a sculptor of some renown. Before his death in 1993 he chaired the sculpture department at the Kansas City Art Institute for 33 years. His work was commissioned across the country, including Houston, St. Louis, Nashville and Santa Barbara.
So, when the massive steel structure goes up this summer, give it another shot. And if you just can’t come to love it, take solace in knowing it’s not a big, creepy baby.
Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or
email him Tim by clicking here
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