Brighton — We have some iconic pieces of outdoor art in this state—the Joe Louis “Fist” in Detroit, the Sparty statue on the Michigan State campus, the Barry Sanders statue outside Ford Field—but the most controversial statue of them all is a little ugly naked guy in Brighton.
Don’t take my word for it. Go to Google and type in “most controversial statue in Michigan,” and the AI-generated answer will likely tell you that it’s a statue on the Brighton Mill Pond, known officially as “Decision Pending,” but which is known to locals as the Ugly Naked Guy.
This 5-foot-tall work of “art” in Livingston County has spawned countless letters to the editor, zillions of Facebook arguments, and hours and hours of public debate and discussion at city council meetings.
I have a lot of personal history with the Ugly Naked Guy. As a former editor and columnist for the Livingston Daily Press & Argus, I’ve been writing about the Ugly Naked Guy since it first came to Brighton in 2006, and in fact, I’m extremely proud to say that I’m the guy who first called it the Ugly Naked Guy.
When “Decision Pending” was installed, people hated it right away, so I wrote a column in June of that year that touched on the controversy. That’s when I called it “the Ugly Naked Guy,” a term I stole from the sitcom “Friends.” The name stuck.
In fact, “Decision Pending” has its own Wikipedia page, and right on the page, it says that Buddy Moorehouse is the one who gave it the nickname Ugly Naked Guy. I consider this the greatest accomplishment of my life.
Two decades after it came to town, the local city council is still doing everything it can to keep the controversy alive.
The story actually begins in 2005, when Brighton Mayor Kate Lawrence came up with the idea to host an outdoor art exhibit called the Brighton Biennial. The idea was that Brighton, a commuter city in Livingston County with a beautiful downtown, would bring a couple dozen pieces of outdoor art to town, and then every two years, we’d rotate them out and bring in a couple dozen more.
It was a great concept on paper. When the first piece of art came to town in November of 2005, though, everybody hated it right away. It was called “Evolution One”—a colorful hunk of metal that looked like something George Jetson hauled out of his garage and threw away.
The letters to the editor came pouring in, and they were 100% in agreement that this was a hideous piece of junk. Deborah Weeks of Genoa Township wrote, “Unfortunately, Livingston County has been stereotyped as a redneck community. The hideous sculpture, ‘Evolution One,’ only strengthens this stereotype.”
Mayor Lawrence told everyone to just be patient—the next pieces would be much better.
We indeed got a few more pieces that weren’t too bad, and then “Decision Pending” arrived, and people hated it so much that they forgot how much they hated “Evolution One.”
It was sculpted by a well-known artist from Oak Park named Jay Holland, who taught at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies and had done dozens of commissioned pieces for collectors around the country.
Because of the controversy, this ended up being far and away the most famous thing that Holland ever did. When he passed away in 2016, his obituary mentioned the statue prominently.
Most people objected to the statue because it was naked and they put it right in front of the Mill Pond, the most prominent spot in downtown Brighton. There’s a playground called the Imagination Station right next to the statue, and it was nearly impossible to take your kids there without walking them past a little Ugly Naked Guy.
Lots of other people objected because the Ugly Naked Guy was adjacent to the Brighton veterans’ memorial.
The letters to the editor poured in. Jim Bohn of Brighton wrote, “Having a naked statue adjacent to the Mill Pond, which is frequented by families, is totally inappropriate. Even more inappropriate is the quote attributed to Kate Lawrence: ‘Don’t ever go to Europe if that’s offensive to you.’ Well, Ms. Lawrence, last time I checked, Brighton, Michigan, isn’t in Europe, so I guess I have a right to find the statue offensive.”
The controversy got so heated that the Detroit Free Press sent a reporter out to cover it, and they ended up running one of the most hilariously ironic headline typos in newspaper history.
Pubic art, indeed.
The Ugly Naked Guy also became a source of debate and discussion at Brighton City Council meetings, as residents would regularly show up to voice their complaints during the Call to the Public.
The Brighton City Council has always been extremely thin-skinned when it comes to fielding criticism about anything, so they decided to show everyone who was boss by using taxpayer money to actually buy the Ugly Naked Guy.
They gave Holland $15,000 for the statue that most people in town hated.
So not only would he not be leaving Brighton after two years—like all the other pieces of art—but he’d be staying at the Mill Pond forever. We showed you!
The purchase in 2007 did nothing but fan more flames of controversy. The issue would come up from time to time at the Brighton City Council table, and despite plenty of efforts through the years to kick the Ugly Naked Guy out of town, he stayed put.
Most people in Brighton eventually resigned themselves to the fact that the Ugly Naked Guy wasn’t going anywhere, so they started to embrace it to some degree. High school kids began dressing him up, particularly in sports jerseys.
When the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup in 2008, the statue got a Red Wings jersey. When Covid arrived in 2020, someone put a mask on him. It’s a tradition that continues to this day.
Just when we thought the debate over Michigan’s Most Controversial Statue might finally be dying down, the Brighton City Council decided to stoke the fire once again.
In 2022, downtown Brighton was torn up for an entire summer while they did major infrastructure work on all the sidewalks around the Mill Pond, so they had to move the Ugly Naked Guy to an undisclosed location.
In 2024, the work was completed, and the statue was going to be returned to his old home in front of the Mill Pond.
There had been plenty of suggestions that this would have been the ideal time to move him out of town for good, but the Brighton City Council once again decided to show how thin-skinned it is.
So the council decided that no longer was this just an interesting-looking statue of an Ugly Naked Guy. Instead, it was now a Korean War memorial.
Seriously.
Holland, you see, had served in the Korean War long before he ever thought of sculpting “Decision Pending,” so the Brighton City Council decided to put two and two together and told everyone that this statue was actually a tribute to Holland’s Korean War service.
They somehow deduced that the Ugly Naked Guy was a veteran returning from the Korean War and that his posture and the look on his distorted face were telling the untold stories of what he had witnessed.
At a meeting in the fall 2023, as they were discussing what to do with the Ugly Naked Guy once the work was finished, one city council member said the statue’s clenched fist “speaks to PTSD.”
Another one said, “It stands for the resilience our city has stood for.”
Never mind the fact that Holland himself never once said anything about “Decision Pending” having anything to do with the Korean War—and he talked about this statue a lot.
No matter. The Brighton City Council was sick and tired of people making fun of it, so they decided to call it a Korean War tribute. They also said that it’s disrespectful to put sports jerseys on it, so we need to stop doing that, too.
When they rededicated the statue last summer, they put a plaque in front that notes the imaginary Korean War connection.
It won’t stop people in Brighton from having all sorts of opinions about the statue. As he gets ready to celebrate his 20th anniversary in town next year, the Ugly Naked Guy’s legacy as the state’s most controversial statue is as strong as ever.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
