***** New York Times 4 March 2001
IDEAS & TRENDS
Turning Memory Into Travesty
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
WHAT is the purpose of a modern memorial - of a monument to someone or something that is meant to last forever? And must it be good art? And who decides?
Such questions are at the core of the debate over the planned $100 million World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, which, as presently envisioned, is an aesthetic disaster, a prime example of bureaucratic high kitsch style not implausibly described as watered-down Albert Speer by a few critics.
The plan by Friedrich St. Florian, an Austrian-trained architect from Rhode Island, entails a giant sunken stone plaza and reflecting pool, 56 17-foot-high commemorative pillars, two four-story triumphal arches, gold stars, monumental bronze eagles, bronze wreaths and fountains smack in between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, one of the most symbolic stretches of turf in the United States.
And that's the scaled-back version of Mr. St. Florian's original idea.
Arriving at a memorial to the good war, in which 400,000 Americans died and 16 million Americans served in uniform, has so far been an endlessly drawn-out, nasty affair. It has been 14 years since the idea for a memorial was first brought up in Congress in 1987. The proposal has been in the approval process longer than it took to defeat Hitler. But this has not forestalled accusations that powerful supporters, without providing adequate public notification, deviously exploited the system to push through the site on the Mall rather than an adjacent site, at Constitution Gardens, which had been the initially approved location. Detractors are now suing in federal court to stop construction.
The major problem with putting the memorial on the Mall is that it disrupts the link between monuments dedicated to the leaders of the two defining events in the nation's history: the Revolution and the Civil War. Never mind that the plan also breaks up a glorious open space, laid out by the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., as an extension of Pierre L'Enfant's utopian plan for the city.
Critics also assert that the 7.4-acre memorial project, which will require the lowering and shrinking of the Mall's existing Rainbow Pool, will make it difficult, if not impossible, for there ever to be another gathering akin to Martin Luther King's 1963 rally.
Simply put, this is as close to sacred public ground as the nation has - a space that itself memorializes America's history and ideals. And even those who aren't reminded of Hitler's favorite architect when they look at the design should still recognize a sterile and insufficiently meaningful plan when they see it....
[The full article, along with two renderings of the memorial's design, is available at <http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/04/weekinreview/04KIMM.html>.] *****
The planned WW2 memorial is symbolically appropriate. It defeats the desire to counterpose the USA as an innocent alternative to Nazi Germany; disrupts the imaginary continuity between the Revolution and the Civil War; & makes visible the wish to bury the Civil Rights movement & forestall any other movement on the Left that may emerge in the future.
Yoshie