Sculpture of Balboa Is Assailed : Art: Proposed statue of famed explorer may be cast adrift on stormy political seas.

A controversial new sculpture for Balboa Park comes up for a vote today by the city’s Commission for Arts and Culture, which will recommend whether the work is suitable for a prominent area of the park.

The bronze sculpture, by Tijuana artist Guillermo Castano, depicts the Spanish explorer Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475-1519), credited as the first European to see the Pacific Ocean. It is being commissioned by local patrons Elizabeth and Gaye North to be given to the city as a gift.

Objections to the project have focused on the appropriateness of both the sculpture’s subject and its proposed site in the Palisades area of Balboa Park.

The 33-foot-high sculpture showing Balboa standing and holding a flag has been approved by the Historical Site Board, the Facilities Committee and the Balboa Park Committee, but was rejected in a recent vote by the CAC’s executive committee.

“The statue has nothing to do with the period of architecture in the area they’re placing it,” said Warren Kessler, CAC vice chair. “I commend philanthropic people who want to make generous gifts to the city, but I think that has to be done within a plan that’s appropriate. I don’t think this met the guidelines for that.”

The Art Deco-inspired buildings in the Palisades section of the park were designed for the 1935-36 California-Pacific International Exposition. They differ greatly from the Spanish Colonial style structures built elsewhere in the park for the Panama-California Exposition of 1915-16.

Members of the CAC’s executive committee say the Balboa sculpture relates better to the Spanish architecture than to the Palisades buildings that would surround it. To support their point, they cite the Balboa Park Precise Plan, which aims to maintain the architectural identities of the two periods of building.

Also of concern to the committee is the commemoration of a historical figure who is not regarded as a hero in all segments of the community. Images of Columbus, Vespucci, Galileo and Magellan also appear in bronze relief on the sculpture’s sandstone base. “It offended me, and I felt it would be offensive in Balboa Park,” said Helen Redman, a local artist and member of the Art in Public Places subcommittee of the CAC. “We sit here on the border, on the Pacific Rim. There are more people here than just those with a Eurocentric viewpoint.”

With the quincentenary celebration of Columbus’ voyage of 1492 now under way, sensitivity is running especially high to the issue of glorifying European conquerors of the Americas. Television programs and art exhibitions across the nation are reexamining the legend of Columbus’ “discovery of America” to incorporate evidence about the explorer’s mistreatment of the native population.

The Centro Cultural de la Raza’s current show, “Counter Colon-ialismo,” attacks the myths that have surrounded the history of colonization. Patricio Chavez, visual arts curator at the Centro, said the proposed sculpture of Balboa is “diametrically opposed to the reexamination of history that we’re dealing with in the show.”

Chavez and artist Victor Ochoa met with Elizabeth North early in the process of selecting an artist for the sculpture.

‘We tried to gently persuade her to deal with the theme in a different way, from an indigenous point of view,” Chavez said. “But her mind was made up.”

North declined to comment on the controversy surrounding her proposed gift, valued at nearly $300,000, until after the City Council gets the CAC’s recommendation and votes Nov. 18.

The full Commission for Arts and Culture meets today at 11 a.m. on the 12th floor of the City Administration Building. The Balboa sculpture is scheduled to be discussed at 12:45. The meeting is open to the public.