Category Archives: Washington, D.C.

Bon weekend

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Museums, New York City, Washington, D.C.

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Hey everybody, I am off to Washington, DC tomorrow for President’s Day weekend. I love the nation’s capitol a little more with every visit. It is especially meaningful to be there for American-specific holidays. I was there last year for Memorial Day.

I am taking the Boltbus and am first going to visit the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, which is conveniently across the street from Union Station. The NPM has an exhibit of Lincoln certified plate proofs that I have wanted to see for awhile. Their website says its closing in “Summer 2012,” which doesn’t leave much wiggle room if one is trying to plan ahead. I have not been to the NPM in about seven years. Also on the agenda is the Corcoran Gallery of Art for the Shadows of History: Photographs of the Civil War from the Collection of Julia J. Norrell. It is not all Civil War. The real reason for the trip is to see my niece for the first time. Her three month birthday will be tomorrow.

If you live in the Big Apple, or are here for the weekend, remember that President’s Day is a Holiday Monday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last month I wrote about my visit to the New American Wing on the day of its re-opening after a four year renovation. Among other treasures in the maginficent new galleries are numerous works by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. When I visited last month I saw his Standing Lincoln. As it turns out this was a recent purchase by the Met, who announced the new acquisition on Lincoln’s Birthday this past Sunday. Something tells me Harold Holzer had a hand in this. Thankfully.

If you are looking to read the book on Lincoln as depicted in bronze and stone check out James Percoco’s Summers with Lincoln: Looking for the Man in the Monuments, which I bought at the National Gallery of Art the day after I proposed to my wife in a Washington hotel room.

An added bonus of the visiting the Met would be the chance to see the Romare Bearden exhibit, which I am going to scramble to catch before it closes on March 4.

Whatever you choose to do, have a safe and enjoyable weekend.

(image/1890 plate proof, Smithsonian National Postal Museum)

Art on the Mall, cont’d

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Briefly noted, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Frank Gehry’s proposed Eisenhower Memorial

In November I posted about the controversy surrounding the Eisenhower Memorial scheduled for groundbreaking early this year. The Frank Gehry designed monument will be directly on the Mall, near the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and within easy view of the Capitol Building itself, some prime real estate to say the least. I wrote my masters thesis on Eisenhower and believe him to be worthy of this distinction. Public art is almost always fraught with controversy, something no one understood better that Ike himself. Speaking at the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Museum of Modern Art in 1954 President Eisenhower noted that “as long as artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be healthy controversy and progress in art.” Controversy can indeed be healthy, moving good ideas forward and pushing bad ones aside. Still, it is this writer’s humble opinion that the design does not suit the subject or the site. Modernity itself did not intimidate Dwight Eisenhower, but the avant garde memorial does not align with how the general and president lived and saw the world around him. Eisenhower’s family has become more vocal in their opposition. Grandson David stepped down from the Commission in December and last week the family issued a letter to the National Capital Planning Commission expressing its disapproval. It will be interesting to see if the projects moves ahead in the face of this opposition.

In other news concerning memorials on the National Mall, the Department of the Interior will change a quotation on the Martin Luther King, Jr. monument to better reflect Dr. King’s words. As currently written the inscription has King saying

“I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”

In a February 1968 sermon know as the “Drum Major Instinct,” King said

“Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

Critics, including Maya Angelou, believe the paraphrase does not accurately reflect King’s statement. The Park Service will consult with the King family and scholars to create a new inscription.

(image/Eisenhower Memorial Commission)

MLK Memorial, cont’d

12 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Early last month I posted about the recently dedicated monument to MLK Jr. now on the National Mall. I still have not seen the work created by the Roma Design Group and am still withholding judgment. Reviews, however, have been mixed. Michael J. Crosbie of The Atlantic believes it a failure. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post is more generous. I’m looking forward to seeing it for myself this winter.

(image/NPS)

Thank the Great Depression…

08 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by in Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Geddes’ Mothers’ Memorial

The one good thing that came out of the Crash of ’29 was that it put the kibosh on John Geddes’s Mothers’ Memorial, a proposed monument to moms everywhere that thankfully never reached completion. The Mothers’ Memorial is just one of the many monuments, bridges, and other structures that were under serious consideration but never built in the District of Columbia. It gets worse. Here is what John Russell Pope had in mind for the Lincoln Memorial

Pope’s Lincoln Memorial

Also on exhibit is a London Toweresque bridge honoring Ulysses S. Grant put to consideration two years after the general’s death. The National Building Museum has these and other monuments to bad taste on display through May 28, 2012.

(Images/top, Library of Congress; bottom, National Archives)

Art on the Mall

01 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Dwight D. Eisenhower, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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I have not seen the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument on the National Mall yet and am withholding judgement until I do. Based on what I have seen in the media however, artist Lei Yixin’s design seems a curious choice both for the subject and the location.  The statue is inspired more by the Socialist Realism one would expect to see in Red or Tiananmen Squares than by the man who asked us to judge people individually by the content of their character. Indeed, the sculptor’s resume includes monolithic renderings of Chairman Mao in the brutalist style.  Reviews have been mixed.  Again, without having seen it I am withholding judgement.

Preliminary model of MLK Jr. statue

Another artist, the architect Frank Gehry, is currently desiging a monument on the Mall for Dwight Eisenhower.  I wrote my masters thesis on Eisenhower and feel I know something about the man.  I admire Gehry’s architecture, but his vision for the Eisenhower memorial gives me pause.  His ideas include massive metal tapestries designed to look like the silos on the small Kansas farm where Eisenhower and his brothers grew up.  These would in turn be held up by massive steel columns. In mid October Gehry answered questions at a gathering at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington. Eisenhower’s family has reservations, and others have expressed concern as well.  Eisenhower was a more modern man than he is generally given credit for and he would not necessarily be against a contemporary interpretation of his legacy.  One hopes, however, that Gehry fully articulates his vision before the project continues.

(Image/C-SPAN)

Custer at West Point

12 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Film, Sound, & Photography, Museums, Washington, D.C.

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One of the reasons for our fascination with the American Civil War is that it coincided with the nascent stages of photography.  Because we have photographs of Lincoln, Grant, and Lee we see them as more human–more like us–than Washington, Jefferson and Madison, for whom all that remain are artists’ renderings.  This sense of shared humanity allows us to relate to the citizens of 1861-65 in a way we never could with the Founding Fathers.  My own interest in the War of the Rebellion began when my uncle gave me a book of Brady photographs when I was ten.

Here is a vignette on the man who finished last in his West Point Class of ’61.

Temple of Invention

05 Wednesday Oct 2011

Posted by in Museums, Washington, D.C.

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These last few years the Hayfoot and I have been visiting Washington fairly frequently.  Our favorite place is the National Portrait Gallery.  For better or worse, I have always taken a cross-disciplinary approach to art and literature, collating in my head the circumstances under which the book was written or the scuplture created.  There is no better place for this than the NPG, with its collections of historical paintings and sculpture that put the art into a historical context.  The last time we visited in July I was reading The Siege of Washington, which chronicled those tense days just after Fort Sumter when it appeared the Confederacy just might take the Federal capitol and end the war before it began.  In Siege, the Lockwood brothers describe how Clara Barton clerked in the Patent Office, which was located in the Greek revival building that is now the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery.  Unfortunately, sexual harassment was not uncommon.  Walt Whitman worked in the Patent Officen during the war, when the facility was used as a hospital.  The building’s history as a museum dates only to the 1960s, not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.

The museum is currently exhibiting a retrospective on the building called Temple of Invention.  Here is the online version.

African American Museum: Coming Soon

18 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in Museums, Washington, D.C.

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This summer the Hayfoot and I joined the Smithsonian.  What I love most about the Institution is the cross-disciplinary nature of its collections.  One thing I am especially looking forward to is the African American Museum of History and Culture, whose progress I have been watching with interest the past few years.  It will be a real addition to the Mall.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Earthquake damage, DC

30 Tuesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Washington, D.C.

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(Stereoscopic image/NYPL)

Inspectors have concluded that the Sherman Building at the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington suffered significant damage in last week’s earthquake.  The Sherman Building is part of the facility that houses the Lincoln Cottage.  President Lincoln rarely left the District during the war and he often retreated to the cottage that now bears his name to enjoy the solitude and escape the miserable heat and humidity of downtown DC.  The Sherman Building was built in the picturesque style of architecture, which incorporated classic building features into a modern, nineteenth century sensibility emphasizing the surrounding natural environment.  The Sherman Building was originally named the Scott Building in honor of General Winfield Scott, who devised the plan to build the Soldiers’ Home after the Mexican War.  In one of those ironies you come across when studying the American Civil War, it was Senator Jefferson Davis who steered the legislation creating the Soldiers’ Home through Congress in 1851.