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Islands of LA recently learned that one of the largest public art controversies occurred in 1992 on a traffic island in South Bronx in front of the 44th Police Precinct.  The public art works by John Ahearn were done in the wake of the Tilted Art controversy, a work by Richard Serra that was built in 1981 and removed in 1989 after a lengthy and contentions life.   It was an attempt to work with an artist that was from the community and whose work spoke to the community.  After 3 years of meetings, discussions, negotations, a multi-departmental panel approved three life sized sculptures. Within moments of its installation, a brouhaha erupted when two mid-level city bureaucrats that were not involved in the process vociferously objected to a white artist representing a primarily black and Hispanic community.  They argued there was no way he could understand their plight.  Ahearn, a long time resident of the community, created realistic statues of figures he felt were representative of the community but he was charged with racism “raising a monument to the criminals.”  Three days after their installation, he voluntarily removed the works.

This story was chronicled in the New Yorker Magazine:

IN THE SOUTH BRONX about controversy over white sculptor John Ahearn’s public statues in a black & Latino neighborhood. Ahearn, a Roman Catholic, has chosen to live & work for the past 12 years in one of the poorest & most dangerous parts of the city. He began painting in college, when a psychic told him he was destined to be an artist. With his assistant Robert (Rigoberto) Torres, he makes life-castings of people in the neighborhood; he makes two of each person, giving one to the model. His sculptures–which have sold for as much as $40,000 & been exhibited in major museums–are in apartments throughout his South Bronx neighborhood. In 1986 he was commissioned by the city’s Percent for Art Program to create a public sculpture for the new station house of his local Police Precinct. He created painted bronze castings of three locals: Raymond Garcia & his pitbull; Corey Mann, with boom-box & basketball; & Daleesha, a street child. They were installed on a traffic island in front of the station house on Sept. 25, 1991. A local woman, Alcina Salgado, & two outsiders, Arthur Symes & Claudette LaMelle, led a protest against the sculptures as being politically incorrect, negative images. At the artist’s request, they were removed five days later. They are now in the yard of P.S.1 in Long Island City. Ahearn continues to operate his streetfront studio. (ABSTRACT from NEW YORKER)