The Martin Luther King Memorial on the National Mall of Washington, DC, is dedicated to the first person of color, first person for peace, and first person with no public or government position, etc. The values this person represents—democracy, justice, equal rights, hope, and love—are ever more relevant to the advance of human civilization of our own society and those of the whole world. The unique memorial style also sets it apart from all the other memorials on the National Mall of Washington, DC. Its central piece, the Stone of Hope, is the first granite statue, the tallest, and installed outdoor. It was designed, carved, and installed by a Chinese master sculptor, Lei Yixin. You may want to know who first initiated this project. Who managed the operation of the memorial development project? Whose design was finally selected? Who is Lei Yixin? How and why he was chosen to be the sculptor of record? How did he design and build the massive Stone of Hope and the Mountains of Despair out of granite? Where did he create those art pieces? And from where did they ship the stone to Washington DC? How did he install this central piece of the memorial? This book will give you all above and more answers you would like to know.

A major contribution to both art history and Latin American studies, A Culture of Stone offers sophisticated new insights into Inka culture and the interpretation of non-Western art. Carolyn Dean focuses on rock outcrops masterfully integrated into Inka architecture, exquisitely worked masonry, and freestanding sacred rocks, explaining how certain stones took on lives of their own and played a vital role in the unfolding of Inka history. Examining the multiple uses of stone, she argues that the Inka understood building in stone as a way of ordering the chaos of unordered nature, converting untamed spaces into domesticated places, and laying claim to new territories. Dean contends that understanding what the rocks signified requires seeing them as the Inka saw them: as potentially animate, sentient, and sacred. Through careful analysis of Inka stonework, colonial-period accounts of the Inka, and contemporary ethnographic and folkloric studies of indigenous Andean culture, Dean reconstructs the relationships between stonework and other aspects of Inka life, including imperial expansion, worship, and agriculture. She also scrutinizes meanings imposed on Inka stone by the colonial Spanish and, later, by tourism and the tourist industry. A Culture of Stone is a compelling multidisciplinary argument for rethinking how we see and comprehend the Inka past.