I’m among those who think it’s a pity that the Center for Civil & Human Rights will be located in a wedge behind the World of Coke. Surely there  could have been a way for it to anchor the Martin Luther King Jr.  attractions and other historic sites along Auburn Avenue.

The process used to select the museum site also was more closed and elitist than is really healthy for an endeavor like this — particular when the whole point is to glorify te 20th century’s most positive populist movement. It left some people in the civil rights community wondering whether the agenda was to help Coca-Cola attract visitors to its own tourist destination.

Shipman’s group is nearing the end of its design competition for the center (and is soliciting your comments). Some of the designs look great, but I’m not convinced that any overcome the site’s physical limitations. The unexceptional, themepark-like architecture of the World of Coke and the nearby Georgia Aquarium doesn’t seem appropriate to the more somber or at least serious subject matter of the rights museum. Can you imagine the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. or Daniel Liebskind’s addition to the Jewish Museum Berlin taking a backseat to the haphazard barn that serves as a glorified ad for sugar water?

I’m still not sure this train has left the station. Sixty-million dollars puts the rights museum just short of halfway toward its fundraising goal of $125 million. But $40 million of that is city money, and the Shipman acknowledges that corporate fund-raising has gone very slowly since the recession began.

There are some good folks involved in this process.  But maybe the slow fundraising will give us the opportunity for a gutcheck on the location. I wonder what the candidates for mayor thingk?

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