Man on Fire in Country on Fire

a life-size fiberglass statue of a cocoa brown man, nude, with left arm raised, legs wide astride a knee-high barrel, is engulfed in orange red and yellow airbrushed flames that encircle his head and arm like a fiery wing. the figure stands on a grey painted mdf pedestal, over nine feet tall. luis jimenez's 1969 sculpture man on fire is installed against a chocolate painted wall and black painted 19th century industrial column at the smithsonian american art museum in dc, and trump hates it so much he condemned the show which he's never seen, in an executive order.
Luis Jiménez, Man on Fire, 1969, fiberglass in acrylic urethane resin, like 9 ft tall, installed in “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum”

In June I did a whirlwind survey of almost all the museums, art and otherwise, in Washington, D.C., and wrote about it for ARTnews. It’s in their latest print issue, and it just dropped online.

For a series of museums I’ve been visiting for years, it was a repeatedly revelatory experience. Luis Jiménez’s Man on Fire is a case in point, a stunning sculpture that stands between the columns of the Smithsonian’s Old Patent Building at the flaming center of “The Shape of Power,” the first exhibition singled out for criticism in a presidential executive order.

And I felt the urgency of the decades and centuries of work, both in art and history, and in the museums’ presentation, study, and care of these objects. We’ll get a more perfect union yet, but let’s not destroy the imperfect one we have on the way.

D.C.’s Museum, Under Attack by Trump, Have Never Been More United In Their Purpose [artnet]