We are in Boston at the moment. Some friends of ours got tickets to Hair, and we joined them here to see the show last night. We got here early yesterday, so I did a little exploring in the environs. The old Town Hall is across the street from our hotel, and I came across this two part sculpture in the forecourt. You can interpret it as you will, but to me there is only one reasonable interpretation.
The piece consists of this sculpture of a donkey:
Now, directly in front of the donkey a plaque is embedded in the ground. You can see a bit of it in the picture above. Here’s the whole thing:
So here we have, as always, the plodding donkey trying to get its work accomplished, impeded always by the trumpeting elephant, who, taking literally the Groucho Marx jest, announces “whatever it is, I’m against it.” The political message is obvious, to this politically obsessed mind at least. How this salutary message came to be erected on what I assume is a public space, I do not know, but I heartily approve.
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