The design shows Eisenhower as a youth gazing out at images of his adult accomplishments against a backdrop of the Kansas plains. But the Eisenhower family objects to the design and is attempting to delay approval of the project in a dispute that has pitted a leading American family against one of the country’s most recognized architects. The family says Mr. Gehry should portray Eisenhower as a man in the fullness of his achievements, not as a callow rustic who made good. — nytimes.com
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it's not exactly fair to frame this as an 'architect vs family' struggle, is it? and, anyway, why has this story seemed to evolve?
at first we were hearing that gehry served the interests and goals of the eisenhower who first enlisted him; david, i think. now, just because THAT client is yielding to the rest of the family, headed by susan, that doesn't mean that gehry should be the bad guy, does it?
if everyone feels strongly about it, then i guess the design should change. but gehry should be re-hired to do a new design project, not made the villain for the first design which was already approved by those who were his client *then*.
[sigh.]
OK, should one wander over to the main opposition to this memorial, the National Civic Art Society, one would be unsurprised to see that they push Classicism and Historicism heavily and have ties to Notre Dame, but one *might* be surprised that their logic for their opposition to this monument includes such gems as:
-The Memorial design has contained benches spelling out "IXXI," the Roman numerals for 9 and 11. Whether this reference to the 9/11 attacks was intentional or negligent, the Memorial's architect, Frank Gehry, can no longer be trusted with its design.
-In 2003, Gehry refused to help design a replacement for the Twin Towers since he was not offered enough money. That alone makes Gehry unworthy of Eisenhower, who exemplified selfless public service.
Hahahahaha looooonytunes!
great catch, donna. the whiners at NCAS are a bunch of conservatives & libertarians... they're connected to AEI, heritage, and the federalist society. oh,and they've been finding good reception from the congressional prayer caucus. of course they'd lash out against that obama-loving frank gehry.
the vice chair's firm looks like it was founded in 1786 instead of 1986.
Donna is right. Loooonytunes indeed.
Maybe this is an opportunity for the leaders and organizations of this profession to speak up in support of contemporary architecture. It would be a shame if we ended up with another WW2 memorial because Architecture failed to push back.
the d-day memorial is equally as awful
You can engage in all the ad hominem you like. They are lashing out because the Gehry scheme would be an eyesore. It looks like the dreadful chain link curtain that used to cloak the parking garage at the now-mercifully-demolished Santa Monica Place shopping mall that Gehry designed. The one that had acquired a sad patina of rust as it slowly corroded. It was so ugly, it was perverse.
Maybe that's fine for a parking garage in oh-so-chic-and-edgy West Los Angeles, but not for a presidential memorial in Washington DC.
I agree that the NCAS has taken a shotgun approach, offering up a barrage of different criticisms, many of them odd and silly. But the core of their argument is sound, in my opinion, and I support it.
they go so far as to say that even a 'maya lin' wouldn't have been selected to enter the competition - but there is no way they'd have supported maya lin's vietnam memorial. how is that ad hominem?
there's an easy out for this - and it saves $112M dollars. you'd think they'd be all for that option.
This is ad hominem:
"...the whiners at NCAS are a bunch of conservatives & libertarians... they're connected to AEI, heritage, and the federalist society. oh,and they've been finding good reception from the congressional prayer caucus. of course they'd lash out against that obama-loving frank gehry."
I agree with you last point: I'd much, much rather they build nothing than build what Gehry is proposing.
It helps to know where these critics are coming from and what motivates them. Are they against this specific design, against Gehry, against contemporary architecture or against contemporary culture. It actually reminds me of the Komen/Planned Parenthood debacle of last week where a politically motivated decision was covered up by flimsly and slippery non-political reasons. Gehry is proposing a radically humble egalitarian narrative. I can see how that might rub people with a certain philosophy the wrong way.
First among the critics have been the Eisenhower family itself, who have been respectful, but publicly critical of the Gehry design and the process that resulted in its selection. Their list of concerns about the design seem quite rational to me, and predominantly address the intellectual content of the memorial, its aesthetics, and its appropriateness as a memorial to Eisenhower.
Read their letter here:
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.net/eisenhower-family-letters-calling-halt-ike-memorial
How this can be construed as political is way beyond me. I don't have to be motivated by politics to know ugly and overbearing when I see it. Where you see "humble" and "egalitarian", I see eighty foot tall scaleless bollards with metal mesh stretched between them. Reminds me of the fencing down at the local driving range, frankly.
my original comment was intended to defend the architect. whether you like gehry or not, eke, presumably the people who hired gehry knew that they would get gehry. and, if i understand correctly, it was an eisenhower that hired gehry. so gehry did what he was hired to do - and it was approved along the way by those who hired him.
is it gehry's fault, or that fault of his design, that the eisenhower who hired him is no longer the one in charge? why is he the bad guy in the nytimes article? a new family leader has led the family in rejecting the design.
so be it. they just need to pay the man and move on.
come on, the failed attacks by NCAS are exactly like the pedantic bullsh*t you'd expect to see on a teabagger blog... calling gehry a 'celebrity', all but calling the artist a pedophile...
also, NCAS has been railing about this long before the eisenhowers' letters were kicked out. and i'm sure the letters were coordinated, as they pretty much read exactly like the NCAS articles on it from the last 6 months.
i'm not saying it's not acceptable to question premises of the proposal, but the tactics NCAS takes aren't appropriate for any kind of rational discourse - and it's done so intentionally.
Stephen, I agree it's a shame that they have gotten so far down the road with this thing. I'm not sure how involved David Eisenhower was with the selection of Gehry, other than him being one member who sat on the board that collectively selected him. I suspect that he slowly came to realize he had made a mistake, and was being pressured by his family. We do know he eventually resigned, and has sided with his family's point of view.
I agree that the NCAS material is hyperbolic and a bit hysterical. However, I think that the Eisenhower family has been respectful and eloquent in their critique, and I think that their concerns are reasonable and deserve to be addressed. See the letter I posted.
I personally believe the proposal would be an aesthetic disaster for Washington.
Critique of the Eisenhower Memorial proposal, by Leon Krier in Metropolis: http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20120214/eisenhower-memorial-washington-d-c
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