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Diana memorial 'ugly, mediocre'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON AUG. 1. The long-awaited memorial to Diana, the late Princess of Wales, has run into a storm of controversy as her friends have attacked the design chosen for the three-million pound project to be unveiled in Hyde Park on the sixth anniversary of her death next year.

The fifth anniversary on Thursday was overshadowed by an angry denunciation of the proposed memorial which one friend of the late princess called a `conspiracy' to forget her . The design-a stone moat with water running through it-was widely dismissed as a "non-event'' and far too `bland' a monument to someone like Diana who still arouses great passion among her admirers.

``Here was the most celebrated Briton of the last quarter-century and this monument is something you'd trip over before you'd realise it's even there,'' said Vivienne Parry who worked with her. Her view was echoed by leading architects and artists who said a great opportunity to showcase British aesthetics had been lost. One called it an `embarrassment' to Britain. `Ugly', `mediocre' , `minimal' and "eminently forgettable'' were some of the words which critics and Diana's friends used to attack it.

A fruit of two-and-half-years of labour, the design was chosen from a shortlist of 11 which included Anish Kapoor's sculpture, a curved dome of water in the middle of the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It was turned down because it was not considered `relevant' to Diana-an explanation which some found rather puzzling. "It never raised itself above the status of a beautiful work of art,'' one member of the selection committee said.

The "chosen one'' is the joint effort of the American landscape artist Kathryn Gustafson, and the British architect Neil Porter. The selectors have described it as coming closest to the criterion. Others thought the memorial looked more like a "pond built in Hull in the 1960s'' rather than a monument to a very contemporary person. The Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, who made the final decision on the recommendations of the memorial committee, called hers the "judgement of Solomon.''

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