Who knew anybody was planning a monument to Dwight David Eisenhower in Washington DC? Apparently Congress knew, having set up a commission for the purpose back in 1999. And now, finally, a possible design for the monument, by Frank Gehry, is getting its first exposure to the public.
As always, there are those who think the new design proposal is marvelous, and others who think it misses the mark. I'm in between. I like the novel aspects of the architecture itself; and I favor innovative designs over the mundane. The mundane is well represented by the World War II memorial, which Stalin would have loved; and the new Martin Luther King Memorial, which Mao Tse-Dung would have loved.
On the other hand, I agree with Roger Lewis that a memorial focusing on Eisenhower's boyhood does not make a lot of sense. Also I can tell you that a theme of trees just doesn't fit -- I've been to Abilene and trees are not typical of the landscape. Oh, and is that a grain silo I see in the design? Interesting, but it may look a bit out of place in Washington. Architecturally, I fear for Gehry's design because imaginative public art has a way of being ground into kitsch by Congress. Witness, for example, the ridiculous addition of the very traditional statues of soldiers to the clean, modern line of the original design of the Vietnam War memorial, or consider the aforementioned WWII and MLK efforts.
Time will tell how the design will turn out. It may be a quite different one.
Meantime, the stealth commission having beavered away for more than ten years now, it's probably too late for me to ask my questions: Do we really have to have a colossal monument to every President somewhere along the Mall, and where does it all stop? How great is great enough to merit a monument? Is there a Chester A. Arthur commission yet?
Somewhere, it's written that a person must have "lasting historical significance" to be honored by a major monument (think of the "major award" in A Christmas Story and you'll get the picture that pops into my head when I say that). I wouldn't deny that Eisenhower may qualify; perhaps more than some others because he did a lot that was both historically significant and important to his country even before he became President. I've been looking for a good, comprehensive biography or history of DDE and his times, but haven't found a satisfactory one yet. And he grew up in Kansas, where both my parents were raised and where I spent and at times misspent a small segment of my youth.
But if we are honest, using the "lasting historical signficance" measure, wouldn't any U.S. President probably qualify? Especially when there are willing partisans of his party in Congress ready to push his cause? Will existing "naming opportunities" -- like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (which has a sculpted head of the eponymous Pres), or the Ronald Reagan Building (how curious that a huge building to house the federal burreaucracy should be named after this particular President) -- suffice for their fans, or will we have to build city-block-sized monuments to them too? We can already foresee that in 20 years or so, pressure will be building for a monument to Obama, if only as the first African-American President, and to George W. Bush, if only as the creator of the most colossal economic collapse since Hoover... (no, seriously, Bush will be nominated because the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred on his watch).
For me, it's enough already. Let's wait a respectable period to decide about someone's historical significance before we throw up monuments to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who happens to get elected President. A hundred years would be about right. From that perspective, we know who's who, and save ourselves an awful lot of smelting.
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