Your Money for This? (page 2 of 3)

It Pays to Misspell

The Artful Dodger
Five years ago, when city officials in Livermore, California, needed an artist to create a unique mosaic for the entrance to its new library, they turned to Maria Alquilar. An artist now based in Miami, she had completed successful projects for other cities, and agreed to the job for a cool $40,000. It took a year, but Alquilar finished her work of art: a colorful 18-foot mosaic, the centerpiece of which is a tree of life surrounded by icons representing history, art, literature and science -- and which contains 175 names and cultural references.

Everything seemed to be fine at first -- until shortly after the library's opening, when astute citizens realized that the mosaic contained 11 misspelled words. Adding insult to injury, among those misspelled words were some famous names, like "Eistein" (Einstein) and "Shakespere" (Shakespeare).

All the names and words of the mosaic had been spelled correctly in the sketches Alquilar had prepared. So was she just sloppy when she was completing the mosaic? She admitted to The San Francisco Chronicle that she had noticed that "Einstein" was misspelled but decided to ignore the gaffe. "I just wasn't concerned," she said. "None of us are particularly good spellers anymore because of computers." Ah, yes, the old "spell-check defense," just what every library wants to hear.

Unfortunately, California state law forbids city officials from changing installed public art without the artist's consent. And Alquilar, upset with angry e-mails and criticism, at first refused to fix it, citing artistic license. Then the embarrassed and hamstrung city officials offered her $6,000 (on top of her original $40,000 paycheck), plus travel expenses, to come back and fix the errors. Alquilar finally took the money, returned to Livermore in August (15 months after the opening), and corrected the spelling mistakes.

Maybe Alquilar thought it was all much ado about nothing, but it does not take an Einstein to know that the entrance to a library, which serves as the symbolic center of a community's quest for literacy, should set a letter-perfect example. Alquilar, being a well-educated former schoolteacher, should have known that. Unfortunately, after local taxpayers coughed up another six grand for her, Alquilar's lesson may be that it pays to misspell.

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