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On Leonard Nimoy's birthday, Museum of Science announced as location for Live Long and Prosper statue - just three blocks from where he grew up

Rendering of Live Long and Proper

Rendering of LLAP statue via Museum of Science.

The Museum of Science announced today - officially Leonard Nimoy Day in Boston - it's working with the family of the late actor on a 20-foot-tall, illuminated stainless-steel statue of the hand gesture he made famous in his role as Mr. Spock.

The Live Long and Prosper statue, by artist David Phillips, will sit outside the museum, on the side away from the T. rex.

"The 'Live Long and Prosper' symbol represents a message that my dad believed so strongly in," said Julie Nimoy, daughter of the entertainer. "My dad always loved Boston and he would be honored knowing that the Museum of Science would be the permanent home to this memorial. The sculpture not only depicts one of the world’s most recognized and loved gestures for peace, tolerance, and diversity, but it will also be a beautiful tribute to my dad’s life and legacy."

Nimoy grew up in the West End, where, as a boy, he peeked as leaders of the synagogue his family attended made an ancient hand gesture during a prayer to bless the congregation - a gesture congregation members weren't supposed to see:

The location is also apt because, as long-time museum goers know, Nimoy narrated the film that used to be shown at the Mugar Omni Theater:

The museum has set up a fundraising page for people who want to help defray the $1-million cost of the statue.

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Comments

I'm all for the concept but it's going to cost $1m to make a large, lighted hand? I love public art and value it but that's way too much money to drop on this.

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No? Then who cares? (I mean this in a rhetorical sense, not a confrontational tone.)

It’s a partnership between the Nimoy Family Foundation, the Museum, and anyone who chooses to donate.

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Not to mention, it'll probably pay for itself as a tourist draw to the MoS

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I think it's shocking that a 15-foot metal hand costs more to fabricate than a dozen Teslas.

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The first Tesla cost a whole lot more than $1m to produce when you factor in the R&D.

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I mean, c'mon.

Also, this statue will never catch fire, drop a finger on the street after a rainstorm, or accidentally run down a pedestrian. Safety costs!

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I'm hard pressed to believe a $500k sculpture with $500k in donations to West End charities or something wouldn't be exactly the same level of draw? I guess we'll see.

Can anyone explain why it's so expensive? The artist needs to get paid, sure and materials cost something, but $1m is a lot of money, that's all.

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There’s always the “this money could be better spent by giving to X” argument. There’s always a hierarchy. We all believe some causes are more worthy than others.

And the exposure argument, that this work of public art will generate more donations over the years to the Nimoy foundation and the MOS then it will have to spend, may or may not be valid (I would guess that it would be one justification).

But ultimately I think we should let people spend money however they want (if it is benign). It’s gonna make people happy. I say so what?

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It’s ugly.

Not a fan of Leonard Nimoy either after watching a weird documentary of him on PBS, also funded by his family.

The family has money and is looking to cash in on a dead white male celebrity fewer and fewer people care about.

As a displaced West Ender, I’m even more dismayed by this schlock.

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"thumbs down" thingie.

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Vulcan nerve pinch on you, whiner.

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I've set my phaser on stun for you.

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What have you done with Spock's brain?

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Please explain how exactly is his family cashing in and how much money are they going to make off of the dead white guy?

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Hold on, there's no reason to expect the Nimoy family to work like the King family.

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Pay the King family.

MLK spent most of his life knowing he existed on a figurative death row. He sacrificed his life for this country and for every US citizen alive today. He spent all of his money, including the $54,000 from his 1964 Nobel Prize, on fighting for civil rights and equality. Instead of grifting off the cause, he left his family financially with nothing.

What he did leave was perhaps the single most important trove of intellectual property in modern American history. Disney doesn’t allow others to profit from their IP. Bob Dylan, Stephen King, Tennessee Williams, NBC, MGM etc don’t freely give out their IP for others to profit from. Just because MLK was not a novelist, a playwright, a filmmaker, or a songwriter, it doesn’t deminish the fact that his intellectual property is still property.

Imagine your father was arguably the most important American of the 20th century—the only American who is a non-President with a national holiday, a man who toiled every day under the threat of assassination and spent all liquid assets on bettering the country—and you are criticized for wanting a cut when people move to profit off of your dad’s intellectual property? That IP is their inheritance.

Turley’s take is recycled white supremacist bullsh**. You like getting paid for your labor, don’t you?

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In that case, Paramount should be paid an $800,000 licensing fee for this proposed Nimoy memorial, since the Vulcan hand thing is their IP. That's how much the King Family demanded to have the King Memorial erected on the National Mall.

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Let Paramount and the courts work it out.

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the Vulcan hand thing is their IP

I don't think Paramount ever trademarked this. Isn't it based off of a Jewish hand gesture for blessings anyway? Pretty far cry from the actual likeness or writings of an individual.

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Correct.
...and there's narratives out there that give Nimoy at least partial credit for coming up with the gesture for Vulcans to use.
I don't think Paramount could trademark/copyright this. It's not like a specific script or film element, specific character. It makes we wonder if this is why the disembodied hand was chosen - could an image of Nimoy in Spock makeup/uniform be contested as a matter of image/likeness rights. After all, a studio did that to Clayton Moore back in the day.
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Roddenberry pulled some stunts with rights/properties. He wrote "lyrics" to Alexander Courage's theme music and wedged himself into the copyright to get some of the royalties.

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Proof that the progeny of greatness does not necessarily match the parents. Bernice King, daughter of MLK Jr., pious and devoted to God, royalties and damning Gay people.

Perhaps this says more about how certain individuals become great. Where doctors, lawyers, artists, experts in whatever fields often raise children who follow in the same life paths, the one life path that has no inherent aspect of to be a person of greatness.

That begs the question of what is a great person? Martin Luther King Jr. is considered great. But there are plenty of people who consider Reagan great.

Does greatness - at least in the US - require a quality of good? What then is good? For any wanting a nation of few elites versus the vast majority of unimportant hoi poloi, Reagan again would be great, while King would be the opposite.

In any case I have not read about descendants of Leonard Nimoy throwing law suits around trying to wring every penny out of Leonard's estate. While the King children have shown that between the profit and prophet of their parents, profit won.

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Casting the King family as greedy geifters who use MLK’s estate as an ATM is tired, decades-old white supremacist garbage and white supremacy thanks you for propagating its bullsh**.

See my comment above. If other people want to take Dr King’s works and images and profit from them, then the family is entitled to protect their IP and negotiate terms. Period.

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How exactly is the anyone (aside from the King family) profiting from the King memorial on the National Mall?

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The foundation which built the $120M memorial was using King’s image and words to fundraise for both the project and the foundation itself. If a foundation/nonprofit is going to leverage someone else’s IP to market themselves and raise funds, it’s common practice to pay licensing fees to the owner of that IP.

And the money was not paid to the King family itself, it went to the King Center, the nonprofit center in Atlanta that manages the Kings’ legacy and manages educational programming.

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Mr. Trump Superfan is complaining about grifting offspring.

Can't make this shit up.

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?

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OMG! He photographed nudes! In nonsexlike ways! https://www.rmichelson.com/artists/leonard-nimoy/the-full-body-project/

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are funded by all Americans, to the extent that revenue is lost in the allowance of a deduction. Exactly how is a million dollar hand treated as having a charitable, religious, educational, or scientific purpose. Students at MassArt or the SMFA School could build a giant hand in a weekend. They could probably acquire the orange dinosaur and a couple of the Hilltop cattle for a lot less money. Throw in the Jimbo's shark and I will contribute $100, cash, no deduction.

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I agree it seems expensive, but it looks amazing. I already donated--they can take my money for a statue like this!

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I suspect that cost includes installation that keeps it from falling and crushing people and an accessible landscaped park around it with the usual benches, etc.

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.

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It's only costing $1M for artist time/effort and lots of stainless steel?

Why hasn't Star Trek/Universal and/or Shatner or some other entity worth millions and millions of dollars because of Nimoy already just ponied up the $1M to make this happen without begging for handouts from Trekkies and the public that can't afford a sprained ankle let alone public art?

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Nimoy's estate is worth millions of dollars. If anyone should be called on to contribute funds toward it, it's his heirs.

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How much did the T-Rex cost? Back when it was just a head on the wall (in the 1960s), you could donate toward its completion. (I did a modest search for the figure, but didn’t find much about the statue.)

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The Vulcans were arrogant, judgemental, condescending and prejudiced against humans and Klingons who they considered to be full of passions , angry and warlike.
So lets erect a statue to a humanoid specie of racists who perfected the Vulcan nerve pinch to use on humans who questioned their authority.

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It's not a monument to Vulcans, it's a monument to a gifted human who played a (fictional but culturally resonant) biracial half-Vulcan half-Human scientist, explorer, and peacemaker - a character whose narrative arc is all about learning to embrace both rationality and empathy, and trying to better understand himself, the universe, and the beings in it (not coincidentally, also an apt description of Leonard Nimoy's life). Seems like just the thing to put in front of a Museum of Science!

(More specifically refuting any idea that character Spock shared the racist opinions of some Vulcans, keep in mind that he not only brought both of his ancestral worlds towards greater peace and understanding over his lifetime(s) and was widely praised for it by the people of both, he did much the same for the Klingon Empire and the Federation by negotiating with Chancellor Gorkon and helping create the Khitomer Accords and end centuries of war. And he was also essential to the eventual reunification of the Romulan and Vulcan people, culminating in the re-colonization of Vulcan as the renamed Ni'Var. He even tried to create a diplomatic channel between the Cardassians and the Federation, before the events of the Cardassian-Klingon War and the Dominion War nearly wiped out that race.)

Trekker Nerd Out!

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Regardless of your opinion of its artistic merit, the sculptor gets paid for creating it (which takes time to make the design and then implement it), there's the cost of fabricating it, then transporting it to the location (NOT cheap for something that size), and then preparing the site and installing it.

If you don't like it, don't donate. I'm glad it's at MoS and not in the neighborhood, where it definitely wouldn't fit in, and if it makes some people happy then so much the better.

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So many people trying so hard to find reasons to oppose a thing that so many more approve of, only to make themselves appear petty.

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I think i see room for pranksters here.

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All that matters is that it is unique. Complaints of crassness have no effect.

Ex:

https://enchantedamerica.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/the-bewitched-statue-s...

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The statue also needs a button one can push and hear it say: "Who put the bomp
In the bomp-shooby-dooby-bomp?" in surround sound.

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"the bravest little Hobbit of them all"

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Thanks....now that's going to be stuck in my head all night.

I guess it could be worse....could be Shatner's version of "Mr Tambourine Man"

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.

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The statue needs a bronze plaque with inscription: "May the force be ever in your favor."

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"So say we all."

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I've got a bad feeling about this.

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if someone will release the full opening sequence. I don't want someone's camcorder version of it.

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This is the perfect location for this. Science, West End.

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