Mushroom-Cloud Statue Bombs in Beverly Hills

There is no place in Beverly Hills for cartoonist Paul Conrad’s sculpture of a 26-foot-high atomic bomb mushroom cloud, the city’s Fine Arts Committee decided Wednesday.

Although some residents had protested the proposed sculpture because of what they saw as an anti-Semitic slant to some of Conrad’s editorial cartoons for The Times, committee chairwoman Ellen Byrens said that had nothing to do with the decision.

“We did not take into consideration any kind of religious or ethnic views,” she said. Conrad had been told “that if a site could be found, we could then consider it. It was decided that there was nothing appropriate, and the work was not to be accepted. It is a piece of monumental proportions that needs a very large, large area.”

Conrad said he was disappointed at the decision, which came after three months of discussion by the committee, which was appointed by the Beverly Hills City Council.

Public art has been a touchy subject in Beverly Hills since the committee came under fire last year for accepting a sculpture made of rusty metal parts for display along Santa Monica Boulevard.

“I’m just sorry that they threw away what I considered to be a damned important piece of sculpture, but that’s the way it is,” Conrad said.

He said he would renew his efforts to place the work, which would be made of copper chains and called “Chain Reaction,” in Santa Monica, where a possible site has been found outside a gym at the corner of 14th Street and Olympic Boulevard.

That city’s Arts Commission is set to vote on the proposal at its meeting Monday, and the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission will consider the offer at its meeting Thursday.

“How far and how fast we don’t know, but it’s moving ahead,” said Henry Korn, Santa Monica’s arts administrator.

Cartoons Protested

Conrad’s cartoons about the behavior of Israeli troops on the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip drew repeated protests from members of the Jewish community at the height of the Palestinian uprising last year.

Those protests were echoed in letters to a local newspaper when word of the sculpture surfaced in Beverly Hills earlier this year.

But the cartoonist said last month that at least 50% of the Israeli people agree with his criticism of the policies of their government.

“The sculpture’s got nothing to do with that,” Conrad said, denying that he is an anti-Semite.

He said the depiction of a mushroom cloud would be made of 1 1/2-inch copper tubing fashioned into hundreds of chains at a cost of about $250,000 to an anonymous donor.