Sergio Furnari said he thought the lifesize sculpture – which no one commissioned – would raise ‘millions’ of dollars
To add injury to insult, Furnari recently broke his foot working on the statue, after tripping over a roll of tape in his studio.
“Is it cursed? Maybe. I don’t know,” he told the Guardian.



So the real cost was probably a few grand in materials, at most, and he’s no doubt saying his time is worth $1000/hour or more.
It was a grift all along, especially wanting to display it in a place that just elected a “democratic socialist” mayor, one of the biggest Democrat strongholds.
Definitely, no way it’s 100k usd of work. Looking around the going rate for human sized metal statues is 15-50k in the US.
NYC is most definitely not a Democrat stronghold in the sense that it’s expected to go progressive in every election.
Since 1960 the republicans have won New York in the presidential election just 3 times, and not once since 1984. That’s 42 years ago.
It’s a Democrat stronghold if there ever was one.