Five-Story Tall Statue Of Nude Woman From Burning Man To Call San Leandro Home
SAN LEANDRO (KPIX 5) -- There are big plans for the area around the San Leandro BART station. OsiSoft is building a new campus that will help put San Leandro on the tech map, and the centerpiece will be a $1 million statue of a naked woman standing several stories tall.
The statue is called Truth is Beauty and it was born at Burning Man a couple of years ago. After spending its formative years on Treasure Island, the statue will have its final resting place here on the tech campus just across from the station.
"Part of what we call San Leandro's renaissance," said San Leandro City Manager Chris Zapata.
Developers chose Marco Cochrane's five-story tall, 13,000 pound depiction of a naked woman seemingly reaching for the stars, which Zapata said sends a positive message.
"There is a dearth of representation of women in the tech industry. And this hopefully will start bring attention to that problem as well as bring public art to our community," Zapata said.
Despite critics who say the statue is obscene, the city and the developer are both on board. In the next few months, Truth is Beauty in all its glory will be gracing the tech center and BART passengers who ride on by.
"I've been at many churches where I've seen statues and I've been at places where public art involved nudity and it's all in the eye of the beholder," Zapata said.
