Bust of Martin Luther King Jr. (Alston)

Bust in the Oval Office on 20 January 2017, below Norman Rockwell's painting *Working on the Statue of Liberty*

A bronze bust of Martin Luther King Jr. was made by African-American artist Charles Alston in 1970, two years after King was assassinated. Alston received a commission from the Reverend Donald S. Harrington, of the Community Church of New York, to create a bust of King for $5,000. Five bronze busts were cast in 1970, each approximately 32 centimetres (13 in) high.

One cast was acquired in 1974 for the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, but has been on long-term loan to the White House since 2000, under the administration of Bill Clinton.^{[citation needed]} It was displayed in the White House Library, and was reputedly the first image of an African American on public display in the White House. The bust was moved to the Oval Office in 2009 by Barack Obama, where it was displayed along with a bust of Abraham Lincoln.^{[citation needed]} It replaced a bust of Winston Churchill which had been loaned to George W. Bush from the British Government Art Collection. In January 2017, Donald Trump brought a different cast of the Churchill bust back to the Oval Office from elsewhere in the White House, but also retained the bust of King.^{[citation needed]}

A second cast of Alston's bust of King was donated to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in January 2016.^{[citation needed]}

References

Martin Luther King, Jr., Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
Obama Adds MLK Bust to Oval Office, NBC Washington, 14 July 2009
Smithsonian acquires Martin Luther King portrait bust for African American history museum, The Art Newspaper, 18 January 2016
A Rare and Important Sculpture of Martin Luther King Comes to the Smithsonian, smithsonian.com, 15 January 2016

See also

References