Where's Raleigh's Sir Wally?

The Capital City has been at odds and ends in recent weeks over, as usual, public art. Jim Goodmon, the Raleigh businessman and CEO of Capital Broadcasting, withdrew his offer of $2.5 million to pay for most of a visionary overhead LED lighting grid and waterfall proposal by internationally known designer Jaume Plensa after Mayor Charles Meeker and the City Council expressed doubts. Its members worried the design would interfere with the vista between the old Capitol (1840) and Raleigh’s Memorial auditorium (1932), two copper-top gems anchoring opposite ends of Fayetteville Street.
In 1995, a much less costly public arts project – the $51,000 Light + Time Tower on Capital Boulevard, was subject of much ridicule by then-Mayor Tom Fetzer, who had concerns about its cost. I pass it every day and still enjoy seeing the colors it reflects as the day wears on.
These periodic epidemics of public doubt about public art are not only nothing new in Raleigh, they’re also practically required by long tradition. My colleague Rob Christensen, political columnist and reporter at Raleigh’s The News & Observer, recalled the other day the flap
that blew up over the 1821 statue of George Washington, all decked out in a Roman toga, that sat in the Capitol. That statue cost more than $11,000 at a time where a buck would buy a lot of marble, and folks wondered why it should cost so much to make a man look so foolish.
More recently there was the public unrest over the art scribed into the side of the education building on the State Government Mall just north of the Legislative Building in 1992. It featured a portion of a last speech by turn-of-the-century Gov. Charles B. Aycock: ``YOU ARE A CHILD YOU ARE SUITABLE TO BE AWED” – words evidently delivered moments before he keeled over and died.
But some folks now are worrying over the absence of the city’s namesake statuary – a 1970s-era sculpture in bronze of Sir Walter Raleigh by Bruno Lucchesi. Sir Walter never visited these shores – he lost his head in the Tower of London before he could get over this way – but his statue graced several points in downtown Raleigh before it was moved when the old Fayetteville Street Mall was reopened last year.
My neighbor a few blocks over, Charlie Gregory, a self-described “Republican precinct grunt’ who helped elect the state’s first governor (Jim Holshouser) in the 20th century and later served on a panel that commissioned the statue, is trying to drum up interest in getting the statue back from a Cincinnati foundry. It was sent there a while back to be tidied up and buffed out. Charlie thinks the state paid maybe 35 grand for the monument. It’s a good statue that features Sir Walter in an open collar, according to a description from the city.
Now the city of Raleigh is looking for a good spot to bring Sir Walter back. I don’t know where the best place would be, but I’m thinking he ought to be given appropriate company with other famous figures from the state’s storied past – say, Dean Smith, Roy Williams and Michael Jordan.
But hold the togas, please.