When Creator and Owner Clash

By DANIEL GRANT

David Ascalon, an Israeli-born sculptor living in Cherry Hill, N.J., who had lost his grandparents and other family members to the Nazis, was perhaps an obvious choice to create a Holocaust memorial in Harrisburg, Pa. His design—a stainless-steel Star of David base from which arises a series of shiny stainless-steel poles, seemingly bound up by a dark, rusty-looking metal "spiral serpent" that resembles barbed wire—was selected in 1993 by the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg for a 15-foot-tall sculpture that was placed in a park along the Susquehanna River in 1994, for which he was paid $35,000. "The stainless steel core represents the Jewish people," Mr. Ascalon said, "because stainless steel has an eternal look." The decayed "serpentine rusting shape," on the other hand, symbolizes the Nazis.

Within 10 years, the Holocaust sculpture needed repairs, because the barbed-wire serpent had become overly rusted. Mr. Ascalon volunteered to do the restoration, asking only to be reimbursed for the costs.

This is where the story gets weird. Read more

http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2010/08/it-is-fact-universally-acknowledged-at.html
http://ascalonstudios.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/3/