Academic Article on the Eisenhower Memorial Controversy

Patrick Hagopian, Senior Lecturer in History and American Studies at Lancaster University, published a well-researched, peer-reviewed article, “From a ‘New Paradigm’ to ‘Memorial Sprawl’: The Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Memorial,” about the making of the National Eisenhower Memorial. (PDF here) It appears in the book Constructing Presidential Legacy: How We Remember the American President (Edinburgh University Press). Hagopian discussed my role in the controversy:

Congressional leaders, conservative journalists, and others picked up on the cues coming from Eisenhower family members [in opposition to Frank Gehry’s design] and from a damning report Shubow had issued. . . .

Members of Congress borrowed a line of attack first mounted by Shubow, citing the need for a verbal explanation of the symbolic meaning of the tapestries. How, he asked, was anyone supposed to know that the trees depicted in the mesh represented the landscape of the Midwest? It could be anywhere, Kansas or Kazakhstan. “Monuments,” Shubow said, “ought to be clear and unequivocal in their meaning . . . . They must be legible without a guide or key, and certainly without a visitor center or iPad. Monuments speak to us even without signage.” Legislators critical of the Gehry design extensively quoted Shubow’s words. They said the memorial “should be self-explanatory so that ordinary Americans will understand the ideas being conveyed without the need of a visitor center or guide.”

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