a1789: Albert Mangones dies (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Albert Mangones

   PORT-AU-PRINCE, April 25 (AP) -- Artist and architect Albert Mangones,
the man whose monumental sculpture the Unknown Fugitive Slave became a
symbol of Haiti, died Thursday at 85 of pernicious anemia.
   Mangones died at his family home in suburban Martissant, said human
rights advocate and longtime friend Sylvie Bajeux.
   Mangones studied architecture in Belgium and at Cornell University in
the United States.
   In the 1940s, he co-founded the Center of Arts, which promoted the early
work of many famous peasant and worker primitive painters.
   In 1948, he was the director-general of the seaside boulevard project in
the capital, Port-au-Prince. The boulevard -- with its promenades,
pavilions, and colorfully lit, musical fountains -- became a model for
similar seaside projects throughout the Caribbean.
   After decades of dictatorship, the Bicentennial Boulevard, also known as
Harry Truman Boulevard, fell into ruins.
   In 1968, Mangones designed the bronze Unknown Fugitive Slave, depicting
a runaway slave holding a conch-shell to his lips in a reminder of the call
to rebellion against slave-holding France in 1791, which led to Haitian
independence in 1804. It stands on the Champs de Mars, the central plaza in
front of the National Palace.
   In 1989, the United Nations chose the statue for a series of stamps
illustrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.