In 2002, computer analyst Stu Smailes died and left the Seattle Art Museum a bequest of around $1 million (US) with two stipulations. The money (1) had to be used to create an outdoor sculpture and (2) the sculpture had to include a life-sized, nude man. World-renowned sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, has created the drawings and preliminary work for a piece called "Father and Son," in which sculptures of a man and a boy (both nude) are to face one another, arms outstretched (but not even remotely close enough to touch the other's), on two separate pedestals within the confines of a fountain. At regular intervals, jets of water around each pedestal will alternate heights - thus leaving either the man or the boy obscured from the "vision" of the other.

An elegant and grand solution, I thought. The requisite nude man will be present, and perhaps the whole piece could also be viewed as a poignant statement about the ways in which fathers and sons often lose emotional touch with one another ... or even the ways in which men, sadly, are encouraged to forget the boys they once were. And surely any city would leap at the chance to have its own Bourgeois! However, it turns out that I know nothing about fathers, sons or the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. According to a couple of experts on art, public sculpture and Things We Must Protect Ourselves Against, "Father and Son" is either:

• A thinly-veiled "gay" piece of public art, being executed by the well-known gay sculptor "Luis Bourgeois" (say what?) or
  
• "Pedophilia on a pedestal"

(Now, is it just me, or does anyone else resent such broad indictments against all men, everywhere?)