Santa Monica : Sculpture Site Rejected

The city’s parks are no place for cartoonist Paul Conrad’s proposed gift of a 26-foot-tall sculpture of an atomic explosion, an advisory board said. Instead, the Recreation and Parks Commission recommended that the towering artwork go on display in front of City Hall.

The 4-0 vote with two abstentions came after half a dozen members of the public praised the statue but said it did not belong on the lawn in front of Memorial Gym on Olympic Boulevard as proposed.

“This would be aesthetically inappropriate for our parks,” said one speaker, Jason Meisler. “If the powers that be want a mushroom cloud so much, they can put it out on the front lawn of the City Hall. It would be real nice with the RAND Corp. across the street,” he said, referring to the Santa Monica-based think tank that conducts studies on national security issues.

The parks commission has no jurisdiction over the City Hall lawn, but Barbara Franklin-Moran, director of the city’s Department of Cultural and Recreational Services, said the recommendation would be included when the issue comes before the City Council this summer.

Conrad, The Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, first offered the statue to Santa Monica last year. When a response was slow in coming, he turned to Beverly Hills, which turned it down last month.