Russians Vote to Dress Up “David” Replica to Appease Local Prudes

A St. Petersburg woman with a warped soul lacking a single aesthetic bone in her body tries to cover up one of the greatest works of art ever created, for the stupidest reasons imaginable…

This reminds me of a story that still goes around my hometown of Sioux Falls, SD.

Back in the late 1960s, the Fawicks, a millionaire couple who had started out here in the early 1900s with the invention of Mr. Fawick’s “Fawick Flyer” automobile, decided to give a gift of appreciation.

Mrs. Fawick was extremely fond of Renaissance art and persuaded her husband to begin the process of getting bronze copies of Michelangelo’s “Moses” & “David.” They ran into unexpected delays due to the bureaucracy of the Italian government and its reluctance to permit access to the molds that had been made directly from the original sculptures. The Fawicks were nothing if persistent and brought their friend, the sculptor Felix de Weldon, into the fray to help them. Mr. de Weldon was able to cut much of the red tape and secured permission for the use of the molds.

The Fawicks had originally wanted to put both sculptures in the oldest park in Sioux Falls at McKennan Park, in one of the historic districts. Local residents were fine with Moses, but not at all comfortable with David. The Fawicks then tried to move the duo to Augustana College (now University). The college was gracious as the school body thought that Moses would make a splendid and inspirational reminder to students to work hard and be moral. David, on the other hand, elicited the same discomfort and was declined by the school.

By this point, the Fawick’s were understandably beginning to feel like a generous gift was being disrespected and publicly made it known that they were preparing to take their gift and present it to a more hospitable city like Cleveland, where they were currently living.

Art professors from Augustana and other nearby schools argued that both Moses and David would make important cultural additions to Sioux Falls while religious leaders and many conservative citizens argued that accepting David would turn Sioux Falls into the Sodom of the Upper Midwest (“Sodom on the Big Sioux” if my memory serves me right). At a board meeting, the conservative faction went so far as to argue that if David were accepted at all, that locals would soon be participating on lewd acts, that homosexuals would be out in the open corrupting children and there would be an explosion of public nudity followed by a just punishment as the result of the wrath of God.

As the city council debated and argued, a local matron who was above reproach and well-respected by the entire community spoke up. She stated that David was a work of art based on the beauty of the human body as created by God Almighty. Anyone who took offense to the human body was being disrespectful to God and insulting his great intelligence. Then she wryly added that if people took to the streets and paraded about nude, as long as they looked as good as David, then “…Praise God Hallelujah!”The city council quickly accepted David.

The final problem was where to set David up. The city council was still squeamish about the frank nudity of David, so it settled on a small tract of industrial wasteland along the Big Sioux River just east of downtown by the railroad tracks. The tract of land had been the site of a former coal gasification plant and had toxic pollution all over it from the waste simply being dumped outside the former plant. The land was also bordered to the north and south by traffic viaducts that travelled over the river and railroad tracks. The city quickly dug a small plaza to set David in and planted sod over the ground. As a final flourish fast-growing trees and bushes were densely planted to screen David from view of passing motorists. This was a sop to the outraged local conservatives who were still howling angrily about morality being subverted in favor of perversion. The Fawicks, while satisfied that Sioux Falls had accepted the gift, were still disappointed by the way David was effectively hidden from view. The only way anyone could see it was to park outside the newly christened “Fawick Park” and walk a winding short path through bushes, shrubs and trees to finally emerge inside a small plaza with David standing at the center of it.

The dedication of David and Fawick Park took place in 1971. There were sporadic complaints for years after about the nudity. David was the victim of a few pranks where high school and college kids would put a diaper on it. By the 1990s, David had become a kind of point of pride for the city, but still wasn’t very widely promoted. When the EPA informed Sioux Falls that the toxic legacy under Fawick Park was polluting the Big Sioux River, the city had to clean up the park. This involved removing David from its pedestal and storing it at an undisclosed location (which turned out to the be the city’s snow plow fleet shed). The entire park, vegetation, concrete and earth, was excavated out to be dealt with away from the city. The resulting cleanup left a wide open hollow scar between the two viaducts.

The city started debating if David should return to the old location or be set up elsewhere? The ensuing debate became heated as morality was pitted against art with a few artistic academic purists demanding that David and Moses be broken down for scrap as they violated the “artistic integrity” of Michelangelo. Whatever.

After some vigorous debating along with the strong influence of cost, the city decided to restore Fawick Park and return David to its former location. Since the land was radically altered and prone to flooding now, David was moved far to the southern edge of Fawick Park on the highest point of land. The former circular plaza that it had stood in was replaced by a smaller triangular platform with David turned around to look towards downtown instead of away as before. The city finally recognized the beauty and value of David and made sure that the trees that were planted in the park were smaller and didn’t block motorists view anymore. Instead of dense shrubs and bushes, flowerbeds and flowering bushes were planted to the rear of David.

David is now greatly admired by the current generation of people living here. The story of how it came to be is an amusing lesson in how much hyperbole, false morality and exaggeration some people were willing to use when the notion of the gift of a twenty foot male nude bronze came up as a topic.