What to do with the Diamond’s Brave?
RTD has an interesting story on “Connecticut,” the Native American that’s perched above a concourse in the Diamond looking out towards the Boulevard. The Mattaponi are said to be interested in purchasing him.
- He was created by a former VCU grad student who intended to sell the brave to a store in the Washington area.
- Initially, Connecticut was on loan to the RMA, and then $36K was raised to buy the sculpture
- The sculpture is made of hardened urethane foam with a fiberglass skin
Selling the sculpture is one of those things where initially, my response is “wait, that’s a Richmond icon – we can’t sell it.” But the more I think about it, it’s something we don’t need (more stuff!) and will be completely irrelevant when the Braves leave, so get rid of it.
photo by: haaaley
Though I will miss the Braves, I think I will miss “Connecticut” more.
The “graduate student,” just FYI, is Paul DiPasquale, who created the recently rehabilitated Headman statue on the Canal Walk and the Arthur Ashe Monument.
Its a site specific piece and wherever the figure goes will need to be constructed to display it. If the Diamond is ultimately razed for a newer place, that would need to be taken into account.
My guess is the Braves won’t want to haul it to Georgia.
Harry,
The RMA owns the DiPasquale piece at The Diamond. So, the Braves will probably be leaving Connecticut and Virginia at the same time.
For more on this topic see a piece I wrote for Richmond.com at http://www.richmond.com/sports-leisure/23546
Richmond.com needs a better RSS feed for their site where I could pick up your articles and not all the crappy ones. Your article is about 10X better than the RTD one referrenced above.
It’s funny that Signet Bank bought “Connecticut” for the R-Braves. By October neither Signet nor the R-Braves will exist anymore.