George Floyd bust, once seen in
Flatbush, auctioned for charity
BY BEN BRACHFELD
A giant bust of George
Floyd’s head that was displayed
in Flatbush and Union
Square earlier this year, and
was vandalized in both locales,
is heading to the auction
house, and proceeds will
go toward bettering policecommunity
relations.
The 6-foot-tall, 500-pound
wooden bust of Floyd, whose
murder at the hands of Minneapolis
Police offi cer Derek
Chauvin catalyzed a worldwide
movement against police brutality,
will be open to bids at Sotheby’s
from Thursday, Dec. 9
until Friday, Dec. 17. Bidding is
starting at $90,000, and Sotheby’s
expects the bust to sell for
between $100,000 to $150,000.
The bust was sculpted by
artist Chris Carnabuci and fi -
nanced by the social justiceoriented
art collective Confront
COURIER L 38 IFE, DEC. 17–23, 2021
Art, which hoped to take
the statue on a nationwide
tour. That tour didn’t happen,
however, after it was defaced
while on display at Flatbush
Junction in June and at Union
Square in October.
In Flatbush, the bust was
spray painted with the insignia
of white supremacist
group Patriot Front just two
days after its unveiling, while
at Union Square, a skateboarding
vandal (later identifi ed as
actor Micah Beals) splattered
the bust with silver paint,
three days after its unveiling.
“I wasn’t surprised that it
happened, but I was frustrated
that it would happen, that people
didn’t open their eyes to
realize what was the purpose
of this,” said Terrence Floyd,
George’s Brooklyn-based
brother and founder of the We
Are Floyd Foundation, in an interview
with Brooklyn Paper.
“It clearly states that hate really
still resides in a few people,
not everyone, but a few people.
And basically, what we’re telling
the world, as far as We Are
Floyd, we’re not gonna stop sowing
love, because that’s what’s
gonna conquer all this hate.”
Lindsay Eshelman, one
of the founders of Confront
Art, said that the statue had
been refurbished after the defacement,
and is now “pretty
much in pristine condition
and ready to go.”
Proceeds from the auction
will go to the We Are Floyd
Foundation, which Terrence
Floyd says works to foster
better relations between police
and communities of color
along with promoting fi nancial
literacy and mental health
care in Black and brown communities.
Specifi cally, Terrence
hopes that the proceeds
from the auction can help the
foundation acquire housing
for its operations.
The bust may also still go
on a nationwide tour even after
the auction if the new owner is
amenable to loaning it back to
Confront Art, though the collective
says that that will be at
the discretion of the buyer.
Carnabuci’s bust was based
on a design by Californiabased
father-and-son sculptors
Daniel and Rodman Edwards,
who designed the bust
soon after Floyd’s death and
posted the model online for
anyone to use for free under
a Creative Commons license,
hoping people across the country
and world would use their
model to memorialize Floyd
and fi ght for racial justice.
Also up for auction is a bust
of Breonna Taylor, who was
killed by police in her Louisville,
Kentucky home two
months before Floyd’s death.
The bust of Taylor was also
crafted by Carnabuci based on
a model by the Edwardses, and
the statue up for auction has
been re-envisioned by Nigerian
artist Laolu. Sotheby’s expects
it to fetch up to $30,000 for the
Breonna Taylor Foundation.
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Brooklyn College welcomed
Oscar-award winning
director Steven Spielberg last
week to cap off a semester-long
series “West Side Story: The
Brooklyn Connection.”
Spearheaded by the college’s
Department of Puerto
Rican and Latino Studies Associate
Professor María Pérez
y González, the series explored
the cultural and artistic impacts
of the 1961 adaptation of
the acclaimed Broadway musical
— and the newly-released
remake directed by Spielberg.
Visiting lecturers included
Tony Kushner, the Tony-winning
playwright who wrote
Spielberg’s screenplay and
Brooklyn College professor
emerita Dr. Virginia Sánchez
Korrol, who worked as a historical
consultant on the fi lm.
“Part of the focus of the NY
Latinx Culture and the Arts
course was to use an interdisciplinary
lens to study the 1961
fi lm by utilizing the resources
that the fi eld of Puerto Rican
studies made possible over
the past 50 years regarding
the socio-historic background
and reality of the Puerto Rican
diaspora in the U.S. and
its love-hate relationship with
West Side Story,” Pérez y
González said in a release.
The base of the story is the
same in both fi lms — starcrossed
lovers María, a recent
Puerto Rican immigrant and
younger sister of gang leader
Bernardo, and Tony, a recently
ex-member of their rival gang
— meet and fall in love against
their own best interests.
Since its release, though,
the 1961 adaptation, infamously
starring Natalie Wood
in dark makeup as María,
has been widely criticized for
its nearly all-white cast and
failure to accurately portray
Puerto Rican culture.
Many of the Puerto Rican
writers who watched the fi lm
when it came out said the same
thing when they wrote about
the experience, she said. They
were able to ignore the issues
they recognized later on, as
they studied and wrote about
the Puerto Rican experience, in
the moment, because it was “a
wonder” to be featured at all.
“When history has a starring
role — does it make it better?”
she said. “Would a 1961
version of West Side Story had
been better if the fi lmmakers
had known something about
the community? Or was it
their prerogative to make a
work of art the way that they
wanted to make it?”
Korrol was just one of a
handful of historians and consultants
who worked with the
actors and producers of the
fi lm to ensure the story portrayed
the history and culture
both of Puerto Rican immigrants
and of the context of
their lives in New York City —
with a cast of Latino actors.
“This was in our DNA from
the beginning,” Spielberg said
in his lecture. “I was not trying
to apologize for anyone
else’s productions of West Side
Story. That’s not in my purview,
and that’s not my responsibility.
I can only talk about
how I feel in my contemporary
time, and I’m certainly aware
of the reputation Hollywood
has for underrepresentation.”
Developing well-researched,
detailed backstories
for each of the characters
has made people more curious
about the fi lm and about
Puerto Rican-American history,
Korrol said, in conversation
with Spielberg.
Pérez y González asked
Spielberg what kinds of initiatives
he himself had participated
in to bring underrepresented
people into the
industry, to become part of
the conversation and learn to
be fi lmmakers themselves.
“We need an abundance of
Puerto Rican and Latinx talent
in the fi lm industry and
other cultural venues — writers,
directors, producers, actors,
artists to tell our stories
with authenticity and
historical accuracy — just as
much as we need to widen the
doors to the room where decisions
about representation are
made,” she said. “Our PRLS
lecture series has broken new
ground in this mission.”
Heading out
Brooklyn College fi nishes ‘West Side
Story’ lecture series with Spielberg
BROOKLYN
The whole ‘Story’
Terrence Floyd looks at the statue of his brother George in Flatbush.
Photo by Dean Moses
Tony-award-winning director Steven Spielberg joined Brooklyn College
students and faculty to cap off their series studying the 1961 fi lm and
Spielberg’s brand-new adaptation. Screenshot/Brooklyn College