Disgraced cult leader’s name to be removed from Riverfront Park art

Arkansas Times/July 26, 2024

By Milo Strain

Inspiration Plaza, the latest public art addition in Little Rock’s Riverfront Park, is striking. A 14-foot-tall bronze sculpture of a man and woman connected by a billowing sheet forms a self-supported canopy over a stone-tiled footpath. The canopy’s underside is plated in $8,000 of 22-karat gold. Four basalt columns are topped with custom light fixtures that illuminate the space in the evening.

One of the most notable features of the plaza, though, is a quote from a former cult leader engraved on one of the columns. Alongside verses by Maya Angelou, Bob Marley and the Roman poet Ovid is a quote attributed to Andrew Cohen, an American spiritual teacher and author accused of physical and mental abuse and financial exploitation by many of his former students and followers, including his own mother.

After the Arkansas Times began asking questions about the quote, a spokesperson for the Little Rock Parks and Recreation Department said Thursday that the city planned to remove Cohen’s name from the column. That decision was reached after staff researched the quote’s origin and were unable to determine whether it even came from Cohen.

“In the spirit of honoring the positive, uplifting messages in Inspiration Plaza, we will remove Andrew Cohen’s name and replace it with ‘Anonymous,’” parks department Marketing & Social Media Coordinator Brittany Nichols said in a statement to the Arkansas Times.

“Responding is spirit in action. We are the change agents that give rise to the possibilities that don’t exist,” the quote reads.

Cohen founded an organization called EnlightenNext in 1988. Headquartered in Lenox, Massachusetts, EnlightenNext dissolved in 2013. But at one point it operated centers in New York, Boston, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Tel Aviv and Rishikesh, India.

EnlightenNext’s website is still up today and shows that the annual price of membership ranged from $59 to more than $5,000. Level one membership netted participants a subscription to Cohen’s magazine, What is Enlightenment? Level five members got several CDs and DVDs of Cohen’s talks, plus some of Cohen’s books and VIP access to EnlightenNext events.

The dissolution of EnlightenNext is detailed by former followers of Cohen in a 2016 short-documentary produced by The Atlantic called ‘Holy Sh*t, We’re in a Cult’.

Cohen disappeared from public life for a few years after EnlightenNext shut down, but emerged again in 2016 with a new website. In 2020, Cohen founded Manifest Nirvana, an online spiritual-teaching platform still running today. A Manifest Nirvana retreat in India is planned for 2025, according to its website.

How did such a quote wind up on a piece of public art in Little Rock? Apparently, it was recommended by At-Large City Director Dean Kumpuris.

Kumpuris served as Little Rock’s point person on the project, working with the National Sculptors Guild to design the statue. Kumpuris also provided the Bob Marley quote.

In an interview Tuesday, Kumpuris said Cohen “is a person who does inspirational work, and my wife got his workshops, and she had the quote.”

Kumpuris said he was not aware of any of the allegations against Cohen or controversy surrounding him.

Here’s the full statement from Nichols, the city parks department spokesperson:

The quote in question was chosen for its motivational content, reflecting the positive engagement we strive to foster in our community. Our focus has always been on the statement’s message, not its origin.

The first feedback we received from anyone in the community regarding authorship was from a Times reporter. In response to his concerns, we conducted extensive research and were unable to identify the author of the quote. To correct this, and in the spirit of honoring the positive, uplifting messages in Inspiration Plaza, we will remove Andrew Cohen’s name and replace it with “Anonymous.”

The Arkansas Times also couldn’t find anything on the internet linking the quote in question to Cohen.

Considering the amount of writing and speaking he’s done since the 1980s, it’s hard to say whether it belongs to him or not. Cohen has authored a dozen books and written hundreds of articles and speeches and is still actively uploading new videos to his YouTube channel.

A champion of public art, Kumpuris has been working with the National Sculptors Guild for nearly 20 years and helped bring dozens of statues to Riverfront Park and other parts of Little Rock.

John Kinkade, executive director of the National Sculptors Guild and the designer of Inspiration Plaza, said donors to the project wanted to pay homage to Kumpuris’ work.

“Their donation was really made with the intent of honoring Dr. Kumpuris and all that he’s done for the betterment of the downtown and Riverfront Park,” Kinkade said.

When seen from an aerial view, the plaza looks like a bowtie — a subtle nod to Kumpuris, who is often seen sporting a bowtie, Kinkade said.

The centerpiece of the plaza, the 14-foot-tall bronze cast, is by Colorado artist Denny Haskew and is titled “I Am You.” Kinkade said that as far as he knows, it is the largest self-supported bronze canopy in the world.

“We tried to research it and we’ve never found anything contrary to that,” Kinkade said. “If there is [a larger bronze canopy], I’d love to know it.”

Kinkade said he and his team came up with 80 possible quotes for the plaza, whittled them down to 16 options, and presented them to Kumpuris, who kept two of them and provided two.

Kinkade said he didn’t know who Andrew Cohen was and “just decided to honor Dean’s selection.”

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