Experts slam statue Craigslist sale idea

NEW YORK, March 9 (UPI) -- U.S. art experts are criticizing a congressman's aim to sell a century-old New York statue of a man stepping on two women as "stupid" and "disrespectful."

The experts said U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., indicated he does not understand art when he suggested selling the city-owned Triumph of Civic Virtue, a statue at Kew Gardens in the Queens borough of New York decried by Weiner and others as sexist, on the Craigslist Web site, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday.

"It would be unethical and egregiously misguided to dispose of it that way," said Sarah Burns, an art history professor at Indiana University. "It makes the people involved look pretty stupid."

Experts said the man in the statue, which was commissioned in 1909 and unveiled by sculptor Frederick MacMonnies in 1922, represents virtue and the women represent vice and corruption.

"This isn't celebrating domestic violence. It's allegory," said Marisa Berman of the Queens Historical Society. She said proposing the sale of the statue on the Internet was "disrespectful."

Mary Ann Carey, district manager of Community Board 9 in Queens, told the Daily News Feb. 26 she and other officials do not want the statue sold.

"It's been one of the board's top priorities for years to have that statue restored," Carey said. "We're not looking to destroy art."

However, Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, said Weiner has the right idea about the statue.

"It's a sad excuse for a community landmark," she said. "Why not just be done with it?"