Civil rights activists former home was facing demolition as family members were unable to raise funds for its preservation
The Detroit home of civil rights activist Rosa Parks has been dismantled and moved across the Atlantic by a Berlin-based artist after it faced demolition in its original location.
The facade of the two-storey building, home to Parks in the 1950s and 60s, was shipped from the US to Germany last month, after having been donated by one of her relatives to Ryan Mendoza, an American artist based in the German capital.
Members of Parks family had in past years repeatedly failed to raise funds for the buildings preservation.
Over the next three months Mendoza will try to reconstruct the building at his studio in Berlins Wedding district, after which it could tour galleries around Europe in an attempt to raise awareness of its neglected existence in America.
I hope either President Obama or his successor will be sensitive to this issue and catch word of the house that is held hostage across the world: a monument to Rosa Parks legacy that was purposely kidnapped in order for America to recognise what it has lost, Mendoza told the Guardian.
The 44-year-old artist said he was evaluating offers from major institutions. The Tate Modern might be a good place to discuss the state of American affairs with this house as its centrepiece, but I feel eventually the Rosa Parks house should be rebuilt on the lawn in front of the White House.
Parks refusal to surrender her bus seat to a white person in December 1955 is one of the most famous moments in the history of the modern civil rights movement in America. Her ensuing arrest triggered the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, a successful protest campaign against Alabamas racial segregation policies.
In 2012 Obama marked the anniversary of Parks protest with a picture of himself on the same seat inside the National City Lines bus number 2857, now on display at Detroits Henry Ford museum.