A Lincoln Nebraska woman complained to the city that a sculpture titled “Spiderman” by artist Ian Anthony Laing at the intersection of 27th Street and Capitol Parkway looks satanic.
The sculpture of red-and-black hands shooting a spiderweb near the Lincoln Children’s Zoo offended a Lincoln woman so much she wrote to Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird demanding city action.
“It is a sculpture of two hands open, painted Red & Black, and formed into Devil Horns,” she wrote in an email Friday, calling the art anti-Christian, demonic, and completely inappropriate for showcase near a family attraction.
She demanded the city move the 6-foot Spider-Man sculpture because it’s ugly, perverse and a “hate crime against the church.”
However, as city ombudsman Lin Quenzer explained to the concerned citizen, it wasn’t devil horns or a city issue at all.
It’s one of 50 sculptures installed across the city in the “Serving Hands Lincoln” public art project, which will benefit Campus Life.
Matt Schulte, the nonprofit group’s executive director, concurred with Quenzer, and further explained the colors are an ode to the more recent depictions of the super hero, who traditionally had sported blue and red.
“The sculpture is most definitely not a devil-related sculpture,” Schulte said in a response to the concerned woman. “It clearly has a very playful child-like intent.”
He praised the community support for and excitement about the sculptures.
And Quenzer told the woman the city would not seek to remove the sculpture.
Want to lay claim to Spider-Man’s hands?
The sculpture and others in the public art series will be auctioned Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. at Pinnacle Bank Arena.
Two-thirds of the auction proceeds will benefit Campus Life, with the remaining one-third of each sculpture’s price going to the artist.
