THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270433
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
The only statue of Arthur Ashe that will stand along Richmond's avenue of Old South idols will be one which an arts group complains is artistically lacking, City Council has decided.
The council told the Citizens for Excellence in Public Art that it will have to take a different approach if it wants to ease Paul Di Pasquale's monument to Ashe off of Monument Avenue.
The artists' group had advocated placing Di Pasquale's statue on a tree-lined boulevard among monuments to Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, then moving it after an international competition yielded a better monument to Ashe.
Under the artists' plan, Di Pasquale's statue would be moved to a proposed hall of fame for black athletes that Ashe, the first black man to win the Wimbledon title, had envisioned for his hometown.
The arts group went to Monday's council meeting seeking ``an irrevocable contractual agreement that the site (on Monument Avenue) be reserved for a monument to Arthur Ashe selected through an international competition.''
But the council told the group that if Di Pasquale's statue moves to the proposed Hard Road to Glory African-American Sports Museum, a new statue honoring another black hero will take its place along Monument Avenue.
``I feel I will have been slighted,'' if Ashe is the only black person honored, said Councilman Anthony D. Jones, who is black.
The arts group, which has raised about $200,000 to finance competition among the world's best sculptors, now faces the prospect of returning the money.
``Our funding is null and void if this is not a statue of Arthur Ashe,'' said CeCe Bullard, a free-lance newspaper art reviewer and a founding member of the group.
The predominantly black council also suggested that the artists group include more blacks if it plans to raise the issue again. Twenty-eight of the 29 members are white.
One member, Beverly Reynolds, said after the meeting that the group had been organized only two months, but adding black members had been discussed.
Di Pasquale's monument depicts Ashe in a baggy warmup suit holding books over his head in one hand and a tennis racket in the other. He is ringed by statues of children gazing upward at him.
Di Pasquale has been casting the statue in bronze and plans to unveil it on Monument Avenue on July 10, Ashe's birthday. by CNB