ARTS ON THE POINT IS THE MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECT THE BOSTON ART WORLD HAS SEEN FOR A DECADE. ARTS ON THE POINT ALREADY HAS WORKS BY WILLEM DEKOONING, SOL LEWITT, DENNIS OPPENHEIM AND OTHERS LINED UP AND READY TO GO. ARTS ON THE POINT WILL BE BOSTON'S FIRST SCULPTURE PARK-IF, THAT IS, THE HATE MAIL, VANDALISM AND THREATS DON'T STOP IT DEAD.

"We're in a current nascent state," declares art historian Paul Tucker, squinting wishfully against the sun. The University of Massachusetts professor is shadowed by an I-beam mass of welded steel that looms 55' tall above a campus soccer field. The construction, a piece by sculptor Mark diSuvero, is entitled "Huru," a word that means both hello and good-bye in an aboriginal Australian language. Appropriately situated to greet incomers from University Drive, "Huru" was the first piece of artwork in Arts on the Point, the public sculpture park at UMass Boston and a gargantuan contemporary art project that arguably borders a renaissance.

The sculpture park is the brainchild of its director, Paul Tucker, an art history professor at UMass Boston, a recent recipient of UMass's Distinguished Scholarship Award and an internationally renowned expert on Impressionism. With characteristic fervor, Tucker curated the 1998 Monet in the 20th Century show at the Museum of Fine Arts, setting a new attendance record for the museum. At UMass Boston's pre-Commencement dinner this year, Chancellor Penny declared the establishment of the Paul Hayes Tucker Endowed Chair for the Arts, which was facilitated by $1 million donations from members of the Arts on the Point advisory committee, Barbara Lee Fish and Ellen Poss of the Poss-Kapor Family Foundation.

Tucker's dream for Arts on the Point was to establish the 200 harborside acres of the UMass campus on Columbia Point, in Dorchester, as the city's first collection of large-scale outdoor sculpture. The campus's bland "prison-like" facades and vast open spaces screamed potential to Tucker. He desired to raise Boston's profile in the world of contemporary art while renewing public appreciation for the challenges and beauties of modern sculpture. Admittedly an idealist, Tucker nevertheless realizes the difficulties of his pursuit: "When works of art are challenging and in a public space, it raises people's awareness and concerns. The arts have always been lightning rods for opinion."

The proverbial lightning struck UMass this spring, when vandalism, community conflict and miscommunication between the college and neighborhood groups halted further installation. The Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association, a residents' group in Dorchester, specifically opposed plans to place a grand Sol LeWitt sculpture on the entrance road to the school, off Morrissey Boulevard. LeWitt's piece, entitled "100 Columns," is site-specific for the entrance median and consists of 8200 concrete blocks ranging from four to 30' in height. Reminiscent of skyscrapers or a series of musical notes, the sculpture would pay homage to the Boston skyline while greeting visitors with an illusion of syncopated harmony. But to Annissa Essaibi, president of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association, "100 Columns" represented discord more than harmony.

"Our overriding concern was that it was taking away from the open space," claims Essaibi, arguing that the sculpture's unwieldy height would block the bayside view. Neighborhood groups, local high schools and businesses contributed to the overwhelming opposition, with additional concerns about kids climbing on or graffitiing the piece. More importantly, local community groups were outraged at having been snubbed and excluded from the decision-making process concerning the publicly visible land. Essaibi claims that UMass, when it was founded in the late '60s, signed a memo agreeing to discuss any exterior aesthetic changes of the public grounds with the community. "We became very defensive when we found out that there was a whole process going on that we weren't included in," she recalls.

Tucker empathizes with the disenfranchised group, but waves off some of their logistical concerns. In his eyes, the LeWitt piece is not a concrete wall, and merely punctuates the harbor view. He dismisses some worries, noting that none of the pieces have been climbed on or graffitied yet. With this piece as the target of contention, however, it has been taken off the Arts on the Point discussion table: "It is more important to move ahead in dialogue with the community rather than keep ["100 Columns"] as a point of argument," concedes Tucker.

Similar worries surfaced about Tony Smith's "Stinger," a diamond-shaped, 6'6" prism that had been displayed at the 1968 Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden before traveling to Europe. "Stinger," suggestive of physical transition or spiritual passage through a portal, forms a cavernous 32' square, which raised concerns about public sex, in addition to distaste for its large steel presence. Demolition prevented "Stinger"'s installation the day before it was supposed to go up. On May 25, unidentified vandals smashed the cement mount supports for the piece, forcing Tucker to send it back to its Jersey warehouse via crane. The vandalism's $8000 setback is just the tip of the contention iceberg. Tucker has received hate mail, plus a threat from a woman who says she will throw herself in front of the bulldozer if the university continues with construction. At the request of residents and State Representative Martin Walsh (D-Dorchester), the dramatic smashing extended the project's moratorium, which had begun two months before the incident.