I'm a Palm Springs tour guide: Let's adopt 'The Babies' sculptures

Dec 17, 2023

Are we really going to lose "The Babies"? After five years of crawling around inside a fenced-in pit across Belardo Road from the Palm Springs Kimpton-Rowan Hotel, these art pieces have become an iconic part of our city.

As a tour guide who drives a van, I am always pointing them out to out-of-towners. My passengers may have nothing to say as we pass Palm Springs City Hall or the McCallum Adobe. But when we go by The Babies with the bar codes on their foreheads, everyone has an opinion, usually extreme, which is exactly the reaction that Czech artist David Černý, who created the fiberglass figures, said he is looking for. There are nine babies in the pit. The 10th one in the installation can be found looking down on passerby from a balcony of the Kimpton Rowan Hotel. I find that humorous.

Look: The Babies don't cry, need changing or feeding. They aren't mooning the art museum. They get people talking and reacting. If The Babies must be moved is there another place to put them? They have become a part of the desert, where the weird and wonderful thrive. Let's adopt them, permanently.

John Stark, Palm Springs