Portland Once Had Great Statue Statues

Our city statues once had luxurious locks.

When I was a younger man, it was my custom to amble around our city with an eye for sculpture. There was one for whatever my mood. If I was in need of courage, for example, I might go to Southeast Portland and gaze admiringly at Joan of Arc on her golden horse.

I still enjoy Portland's statues, though they fail to have the same effect. I blame this on the city, which in the past two decades has enacted major changes in its statue maintenance policy, most notably the decision to no longer augment the statues with wigs of human hair.

From Portland's earliest days, it was law that the city provide and regularly maintain a wig of human hair of appropriate style for every statue of metal or stone that depicted the human form. The law was referred to as the Hirsute Statue Statute or "Wig Law."

The rationale for this law was to make statues more relatable. When we are confronted with a statue that is not wearing a wig, the immediate effect is alienation. Though we recognize the human form, it is within the context of a sterile, lifeless material from which it was hammered. Wigs have the effect of humanizing the subjects of statues, of making the immortal mortal again. Their susceptibility to human frailties are revealed to us, which has the added effect of making it easier to aspire to their virtues.

While the benefits of the Wig Law were obvious, the downside, from the city's perspective, was the additional funding so that city workers could travel to the statues scattered throughout the city to remove gum, twigs and other foreign gunk from their wigs, wash them, and perform other necessary wig maintenance. It was not cheap, but few would argue it was not taxpayer money well-spent.

Myriad small factors contributed to the decline of the Wig Law, but I saw two primary culprits.

The first was the increased profile of Locks of Love, the charitable organization that gives wigs of human hair to children who have lost their own hair fighting cancer. While noble in its cause, this organization thinned the supply of human-hair wigs.

The second pitfall occurred shortly after the 1985 unveiling of Raymond Kaskey's Portlandia statue. For many months afterward, the citizens of Portland stood on the street staring up in awe at Portlandia and her luxuriously flowing flaxen wig. That was until a special investigation revealed the wig was not made from human hair at all—but horsehair.

The wig was immediately removed, and the city sued Kaskey. But the famous sculptor fought back, and the ensuing costly legal battle lasted more than three years. Kaskey—not the city of Portland—won sole legal authority to choose a wig for the Portlandia statue.

To pay legal fees associated with the lawsuit, the city's wig maintenance division was gutted. Wigs were removed from most of Portland's statues. A few remained, but eventually those wigs were removed, too.

It is a sad state of affairs and symbolic of the way the city has changed that I can no longer punctuate my visits to Mr. Lincoln by climbing onto his back and tousling his auburn hair.

Willamette Week

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