Memorial for AIDS Victims Stirs Dispute

From the day last year when Robert Bell unveiled his design for a 10-foot-high granite monument in West Hollywood to honor those who have died of AIDS, he knew he was onto something.

Even before the West Hollywood City Council last month approved in principle the establishment of an AIDS memorial, Bell had received dozens of phone calls and letters from people interested in seeing his proposal take shape. His idea had struck a responsive chord in a city whose population is 40% homosexual, and where seemingly almost everyone has had a workmate, friend or loved one afflicted by the disease.

“It was like everyone wanted to be a part of the process,” said the 39-year-old Santa Monica screenwriter who has no pretensions about being an artist.

But all has not gone smoothly since then.

When members of the city’s Fine Arts Advisory Board learned of the proposal, they seemed ready to dismiss Bell’s simple design--an elliptical stone monument capped with an eternal flame--without even having seen it. And Bell began to suspect that his monument may have become a different kind of symbol than he intended.

Collision With Politics

“I think it demonstrates what happens when good intentions collide with politics,” he said.

While no one disputed his role in generating enthusiasm for the monument, several members of the arts panel decided that there should be an international competition to select an AIDS memorial of “national significance.”

“This is much too important for us to just go with the first artist who comes along,” said arts board Vice Chairman John Christofferson. “I don’t think we want to be upstaged by an AIDS memorial in Kalamazoo or somewhere else a year from now.”

Christofferson envisions a West Hollywood memorial “that is to AIDS what the Vietnam Memorial is to the war. . . . Our first concern must be that what is done is good art.”

“I guess I’m still a little shellshocked by the whole thing,” Bell said. “I mean, you try to do something nice, and it’s like people sort of don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

The proposal got its start last summer when Bell and a friend were driving down Santa Monica Boulevard past an empty median strip and the friend suggested that West Hollywood needed a monument to AIDS victims.

Bell went home and sketched a design, then took it to a friend who produced a computer-generated version of his drawing.

Two months later, sketches in hand, he set out for a political fund-raiser at a West Hollywood athletic club, he said, “with the express purpose of cornering (City Councilman) Steve Schulte and showing him what I had.”

“I said, ‘We don’t know each other but I’ve got something I think you would be interested in,’ ” Bell said. “We were kneeling on the floor with everything spread out looking at these sketches. He seemed to be impressed.”

Schulte recalled recently that several people had suggested an AIDS memorial to him but that Bell “was the first one who actually had something concrete, and those of us who looked at it liked what we saw.”

Bell did some investigating and determined that the granite, concrete and a plaque for an inscription would probably cost $120,000 to $140,000.

He suggested that the corner of Santa Monica and Crescent Heights boulevards might make a good location, and that the monument might be more meaningful if the city sponsored a contest to determine the inscription.

In January, Schulte organized a “working group” consisting of Bell and representatives from four AIDS organizations to devise a plan for establishing a monument.

One of Bell’s friends, a graphic artist, made a model of his design, which Bell took with him when he made his pitch before the City Council on May 2. The council was also impressed.

While they stopped short of endorsing Bell’s specific proposal, council members went on record as favoring the establishment of an AIDS memorial and directed city staff to work with Bell to determine the probable cost.

What the council didn’t do was consult with its arts board, which was created a year ago to provide advice on such aesthetic matters.

When a city staff member appeared at the board’s most recent meeting two weeks ago to smooth the way for acceptance of the memorial, he was met with a barrage of criticism.

“We are supposed to be an advisory board to the council,” arts board member Joseph Young, a sculptor, said in an interview. “I don’t know how you’re supposed to do that after the fact.

“I don’t even know who (Bell) is,” he added. “For all we know, his design may be a world-beater. If it is, I’m sure that when the time comes it will receive consideration along with other proposals.”

The arts board is expected to consider a proposal for a broad design competition at its next meeting.

Bell is resigned now to having his model matched against the work of various professionals in what may not be a winning battle for him.

“The most important thing to me is to see a monument,” he said, “but naturally I’d like to see my idea chosen.”