Dan Heilman, BridgeTower Media Newswires
The monuments to three of the nation's most revered presidents -Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln - are among the most visited and treasured structures in our nation's capital.
But has the time of the presidential memorial come and gone? Maybe so - if the long-running struggle to construct such a thing for Dwight D. Eisenhower is any indication.
Bruce Cole, a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, spoke recently at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul about getting a memorial to "Ike" off the ground. The struggle has gone on more than twice as long as Eisenhower's two terms as president in the mid-20th century.
The monument is expected to break ground this fall and open in 2020, according to the commission.
Cole, a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said the struggle is what happens when policy, patronage and politics dictate the construction of an artistic structure.
"A memorial, properly done, should move you - make you want to do better," said Cole, now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. "The Lincoln Memorial not only changed that space, but made it sacred because of events like the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights."
Legislation approving an Eisenhower memorial was enacted in 1999, but from the beginning the project was fraught with trouble. A design for the memorial wasn't approved by the 12-member memorial commission until 2010, and that came with its own problems.
Frank Gehry, the architect who designed the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, submitted the design chosen by the memorial commission. But Gehry, whom Cole described as an "architect of disruption," delivered a design that many thought was at once too big and too small.
Sprawling over 4 acres in a space adjacent to the National Mall and just behind the National Air and Space museum, the proposed memorial would have been big enough to contain the existing memorials to Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson in their entireties.
Ten 80-foot-high columns would dominate the area and obstruct views. And in the center would be a small statue of Eisenhower as a boy, looking pensively into the distance.
"People felt the statue diminished him," said Cole. "There was no 'there' there. It was just a bunch of stuff with no unifying aspect."
The criticism was nearly unanimous, he said. Eisenhower's family - including granddaughter Susan, a member of the memorial commission - disliked the design. Critics condemned the submission process, which was by invitation and included no public input.
Washington Post columnist George F. Will labeled the $142 million design "a monstrosity" in a 2015 column.
The design jury that reviewed the submissions of Gehry and others concluded that "none of the visions expressed the whole essence of Eisenhower," Cole said, reading from the jury's comments.
"It was doomed because it was designed by means of federal bureaucracy," said Cole. "All these various entities had their finger on the scale."
Gehry's firm kept at it, however, submitting modifications in 2012 and a complete revision in 2014. Among the refinements was a metal tapestry depicting Omaha Beach, the site of Eisenhower's triumphant 1944 D-Day invasion - but as it exists today, complete with beach chairs.
"I can't imagine it, but I think it's even worse" than the original design, said Cole.
The memorial commission is determined to forge ahead despite the delays and criticism over the project.
"The design has been approved on multiple occasions by the federal review agencies and the EMC members," said a spokesperson for the Eisenhower Memorial Commission contacted by Finance & Commerce. "Apparently, Mr. Cole has another view, but we are set to break ground this fall and anticipate dedicating the memorial to this great American in 2020."
The United States Commission on Fine Arts in January asked the project's architects to revisit and resubmit the design for final approval. Even if that approval comes, it guarantees little, even a groundbreaking date, Cole said. With tens of millions of dollars spent and numerous designs changed and rejected outright, he expects the memorial will remain stuck in limbo.
"Eisenhower has faded from memory," he said. "Funding from Congress has trickled to almost nothing, and private money is not going to build this."
What's the lesson? Maybe that memorializing our leaders is meant to be a more modest affair, especially in the case of someone as personally unassuming as Eisenhower reportedly was. Cole pointed out that most of the effective presidential memorials are in the forms of libraries or understated sites that invite reflection.
"If I had my druthers, after this there would be no more talk of presidential memorials," he said. "Politics has become too deeply involved, and the idea is exhausted. And there's no more room left on the National Mall, anyway."
Published: Fri, Mar 10, 2017
