Disgraced cult leader’s name to be removed from Riverfront Park art
Published By admin with Comments 0
Inspiration Plaza, the latest public art addition in Little Rock’s Riverfront Park, is striking. A 14-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a man and woman connected by a billowing sheet forms a self-supported canopy over a stone-tiled footpath. The canopy’s underside is plated in $8,000 of 22-karat gold. Four basalt columns are topped with custom light fixtures that illuminate the space in the evening.
One of the most notable features of the plaza, though, is a quote from a former cult leader engraved on one of the columns. Alongside verses by Maya Angelou, Bob Marley and the Roman poet Ovid is a quote attributed to Andrew Cohen, an American spiritual teacher and author accused of physical and mental abuse and financial exploitation by many of his former students and followers, including his own mother.
After the Arkansas Times began asking questions about the quote, a spokesperson for the Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department said Thursday that the city planned to remove Cohen’s name from the column. That decision was reached after staff researched the quote’s origin and were unable to determine whether it even came from Cohen.
Content retrieved from: https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2024/07/25/disgraced-cult-leaders-name-to-be-removed-from-riverfront-park-art.
