The Awakening by Seward Johnson — Attraction in Hopewell Township

"The Awakening" is a very expensive, very embarrassing selfie, of a person we might call "Tone Deaf America, never ever awakening, apparently."

All of this metal, mined from the earth; all of this money spent, just so a rich colonist can cast a sculpture of a giant anguished colonist, busting out of the earth screaming, even though the land that he's busting out of, his colonial culture proudly and happily stole at gunpoint from the Lenni-Lenape people. And indeed it's indigenous anguish, not colonist, that continues to scream out of this land everywhere we look (albeit not funded by the Johnson fortune, or supported by the art community of Hopewell).

Are colonists those whose anguish should be awakened from the fields of Hopewell; those whose anguish should be funded and memorialized and tower over us? Should we be talking MORE about what this colonist, emerging from the land, and the colonist who sculpted him, might be saying? Are these the voices we need to be hearing in 2024, as we careen toward the cliff of ecological collapse in a shiny AI-powered electric car of tone-deaf American awesomeness? Should we just consider this sculpture added to the ongoing tab owed to the native communities of New Jersey for bulldozing their carefully hewn societies, nurtured and refined and perfected to this landscape over untold thousands of years, supporting the most sustainable human society to ever exist on this landscape, everyone they'd ever loved, and everything they'd ever known? Was it worth murdering their women and children while they slept, then forcing survivors to trudge in ghastly death marches that many didn't survive, for hundreds of miles with nothing on their backs, so that their villages could be looted, burned, and buried, and their carefully tended land could instead be used smartly and cleverly for sculptures of enormous metal yelling colonists?

All the while, the descendants of the humans that this colonist's ancestors tortured, abused, and human trafficked, live in Trenton and Camden, and are owed millions and millions of dollars for 400 years of forced labor. But! Instead of colonists using their riches to pay the reparations to this community that they're fairly owed, they continue to smelt giant metal sculptures and other egotistical knick knacks of progress and industry, and they continue to dump heavy metal pollution into these communities air, water, and soil. What are we to think of this use of resources, and this use of metals? Who gets to decide where metals should be put, whether poor communities of color want them there or not? What do we call entry without consent? We have a word for that in this culture don't we? Whose artistic visions; whose imaginations get to be awakened and get to be funded? What is a beautiful vision that ought to be beheld in public? Is this public art?

All the while, folks here on Google Maps decry that children are climbing the sculpture, or that people are climbing it to take vain selfies on it, instead of "enjoying it properly" as "art" ought to be enjoyed, because dang it, SOME people should have some respect shouldn't they!?

I think that we have no time left for the kind of colonial fantasy embodied in "The Awakening". It's time to fund public art that not only imagines freedom for all people, but helps people enjoy it in real time. It's way past time for colonial America to wake up. Until then, we've got "The Awakening" (aka, the...

I'm an artist who loves and support art but this giant, disturbing, very old fashioned male sculpture scars the landscape and distracts from the natural beauty of the area- which is very precious, rare and becoming more rare as humans continue to leave egotistical marks everywhere to the point the eye never rests on an open sight without human interference. First seeing this last year I was dismayed, hoped it was only temporary. I always thought residents in Hopewell were true conservative nature lovers, careful and smart to not allow ugly development and knew when to not blight a beautiful area meant for public use.

This talented artist has plenty of art in Hamilton NJ (Grounds for Sculpture) people can enjoy. That his work is now so far away in pretty Hopewell reminds me of spray paint graffiti artists tagging on a new block of the neighborhood on the side of a beautiful historic building, demanding they be recognized whether the public wants it or not. I want open skies, birds, fields and trees at a nature preserve, not massive, disturbing human made distractions which also attracts more gawkers, cars, noise and pollution. Anyone who knows the trail area there knows the before and after- with the sculpture came more people, trash and noise. They even disrespect the sculpture too by crawling and standing on it for photo ops, which of course isn't allowed. Hopefully the sculpture can be moved to a more appropriate place elsewhere, and inspire young artists to get into the arts.. and city councils to be more thoughtful about where and how public art is shown. Bigger is not...

I see many disparate opinions of this art installation in the reviews, and I must say that I appreciate the disparity. As art should do, this installation makes you think. You may love it, you may hate it. And neither is right ir wrong. But if it doesn't make you think, if it doesn't pull at you emotionally in some way, be it joy, anger, melancholy, or despair, then I believe the art has failed. Strong emotions in these reviews. And I'll say this, if I could give this review five stars and one star at once, I would. Because it makes me think. And so have...