President of the National Civic Art Society, a non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. that promotes the classical and humanistic tradition in public art and architecture. Eleventh Chairman of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency comprising seven presidential appointees who are the aesthetic guardians of Washington.
One of President Trump’s best appointments in his first term was Justin Shubow, who revitalized the semi-dormant U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. He provided alternatives to overblown and poorly conceived new monuments for the Washington Mall, and he made significant inroads toward changing the philosophy at the General Services Administration, which builds and renovates federal buildings.
Shubow’s advocacy for more traditional architecture, from classical to Art Deco, brought blistering criticism from defenders of brutalism; both the New York Times and National Public Radio grudgingly called him ‘one of modern architecture’s biggest critics.’ Despite nearly universal opposition to Shubow’s reforms from the nation’s leading architects, a 2020 Harris poll found that 72 percent of the public preferred traditional architecture in federal buildings.
Architecture is only one of the arts, but Shubow, who is reportedly under consideration by the Trump administration for the NEA Chair nomination, would be a compelling advocate for all of them. The battle lines for literature, music, theatre and the fine arts are essentially the same as they are for architecture.
On February 5, 2025, I discussed my vision for serving as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, together with how Trump is beautifying civic architecture, on the Ben Shapiro Show.
I explained, “My vision comes from Dana Gioia, the masterful poet and translator who ran the NEA under George W. Bush. He said, ‘A great nation deserves great art.’ For too long, the NEA has not been producing great art, and I think this is one major reason that Republicans and conservatives have long called for defunding it. But I think that the highest art is that which is beautiful, profound, or moving, and we can foment a cultural renaissance in this country by using the NEA as a vehicle.”
Shapiro commented, “Well, Justin, good luck to you in the quest. If you do become the head of the NEA, that’d be wonderful. Obviously, President Trump’s vision for revitalizing America’s architecture and making the country beautiful again would be really nice because the fact is that so many of our federal buildings are, in fact, deliberately ugly and designed to intimidate. Justin does great work on this.”
President Donald Trump has made it clear that the aesthetics of government buildings will be a priority in his second presidency. His memorandum planted the flag: “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.” The memo directs the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that oversees federal buildings, to send “recommendations to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage,” and insists that those recommendations “consider appropriate revisions to the Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture.”
Revising the Guiding Principles would be a monumental development. Those principles, issued in 1962 in a White House report on government office space, replaced official classicism (which began with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) with de facto official modernism, and abdicated authority from the GSA to the (modernist) architectural establishment. “Design must flow from the architectural profession to the Government,” the policy read, “and not vice versa.” By suggesting that these guidelines be changed, Trump is revealing his commitment to democracy in design.
The president’s memorandum has the same title as the executive order on government buildings that he issued at the end of his first term in office. That order revolutionized federal architecture, reorienting it from ugly and banal modernism to classical and traditional design. It required that, in planning the construction of federal buildings, special regard be given to classical and traditional styles across the country, defined broadly to include everything from Art Deco to Pueblo Revival. The order specified that in Washington, D.C.—a city defined by its classical federal buildings and monuments and intended by the Founding Fathers to echo ancient Greece and Rome—classicism was the “preferred and default” style. Trump’s directive also required that the general public—defined to exclude architects and critics—have a say in design decisions. No such requirement had existed at GSA, as documented in a recent Government Accountability Office report.
The order provoked a hysterical response from both the architectural establishment and cultural elites. The New York Times editorial board, for example, published an attack on contemporary classical architecture titled, “What’s So Great About Fake Roman Temples?” Architecture professors and critics accused the order of being Hitlerian or promoting white supremacy.
President Joe Biden predictably rescinded the directive almost immediately on taking office, but Trump’s memorandum from last week makes plain that a revamped executive order is on its way. The president is keeping the promise he made in 2023 at CPAC to “get rid of bad and ugly buildings and return to the magnificent classical style of Western Civilization,” and aligning himself with the 2024 GOP platform, which pledges that “Republicans will promote beauty in Public Architecture,” “build cherished symbols of our Nation,” and make Washington, D.C. the “Most Beautiful Capital City.”
With this memorandum and the coming executive order, the Trump administration is poised to Make America Beautiful Again. Such an agenda would reform not only public architecture but also cultural agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts—the country’s largest arts funder, with a $210 million annual budget—which for too long have failed to foster art that invokes American greatness. Trump should see the NEA, in particular, as a vehicle for ennobling the United States and boosting our national prestige.
The president has indicated that his beautification campaign will even include infrastructure. Sean Duffy, his nominee to serve as secretary of transportation, would “prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America’s highways, tunnels, bridges and airports” (emphasis mine). Just two days after the election, Trump had a cordial phone call with New York governor Kathy Hochul, agreeing with her that the dismal, dangerous Penn Station can be made “beautiful” again. My organization, the National Civic Art Society, has long called for the building of a new classical station as grand as the original Beaux Arts structure that was demolished in 1963. Could the stars be aligning?
Trump’s aesthetic agenda could have dramatic consequences. Prior to the election, Trump stated that he wants the FBI, now headquartered in a decaying Brutalist structure, to get a new building at its current site on Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs between the Capitol and White House. The new structure, he wrote on Truth Social, would be the “CENTERPIECE” of his “PLAN TO TOTALLY RENOVATE AND REBUILD OUR CAPITAL CITY INTO THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND SAFEST ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.” Given the looming executive order’s likely requirement that all new federal buildings in Washington be classical, the capital will likely get an enormous and inspiring classical building—one that could symbolize a bold era in both architecture and the republic in which it stands.
Writing for Dezeen, the publication’s editor Tom Ravenscroft interviewed me at length in a January 29, 2025 piece on Trump’s directives re federal architecture:
[Shubow] described architects’ responses as “hysterical” and claimed that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) is “arguing in bad faith”.
“The modernist architects have to understand the world is not coming to an end,” said Shubow. “I mean, would it be so bad if there’s special regard for classical, traditional architecture?” . . .
Rather than setting a new direction for US civic architecture, Shubow argues that the executive order merely signals a return to classical styles after an interruption of modernism.
“We believe that traditional architecture is unparalleled in its beauty, its legibility and its appreciation by the common man,” he said. “Essentially, classical architecture is the architecture of American democracy, going back to the founding fathers.”
“What are the buildings you think of when you think of the US government?” he continued. “It’s the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Federal Triangle. These are all classical buildings.” . . .
Shubow, who is reportedly being considered for the official position of chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, expects subsequent orders to mandate that a classical option for new federal buildings is put forward.
“I think the way this will work out when there’s a new executive order and perhaps other directives, is that there will be substantial public input with some kind of requirement that the public be presented with classical and traditional alternatives.”
On January 25, 2025, I was as one of three jurors for the Addison Mizner Awards, the highest prizes given out by the Florida chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. I served alongside San Francisco-based interior designer Suzanne Tucker and Houston-based architect Russell Windham, chairman of the national ICAA board. There were 75 entries in the (blindly reviewed) competition. Categories included residential, commercial, multi-family, folly, and landscape architecture; renovations and additions; historic preservation; residential and commercial interior design; craftmanship; and more.
Convening in Palm Beach, we faced the difficult but good problem of having to choose winners from so many worthy submissions.
The award ceremony will take place April 26, 2025 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida.
On January 22, 2025, I appeared on The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast with the eponymous host, Senior Editor at National Review. To quote the show’s summary:
On episode 79 of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast, Charles talked to Justin Shubow, the president of the National Civic Art Society, about the importance of classical architecture. What is classical architecture? Why is it “humanistic”? What’s wrong with modern art? Why do people defend it? Would it be too expensive to return to classical architecture? Why was Penn Station knocked down? Should it be rebuilt? What are the prospects of a renaissance in architecture under Donald Trump?
On January 17, 2025, I was interviewed on the Ricochet podcast where I talked about beauty, national greatness, and government policy regarding art and architecture–especially with regard to the National Endowment for the Arts–with Steven Hayward, Charles C. W. Cooke, and James Lileks.
Lileks commented, “Good luck. Hope you get in [as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts]. Look forward to what you do if you do, and maybe after you’ve been in the atelier of government and you’ve changed the cultural shape of the nation, you’ll come back and speak with us about what you’ve done and what needs to be done still.”
In an episode titled “This Federal Agency Could Make Art in America Again,” I discussed the future of the National Endowment for the Arts on novelist and commentator Andrew Klavan’s show.
He kindly said to me, “I have to say I love your ideas. I like the way you’re thinking about it, and I like what you’re thinking about. . . . It’s a central part of the renewal that I hope we’re about to see. . . . Next time I talk to you, I hope you’re the head of the National Endowment for the Arts.”
What should we do with the blight of Brutalist buildings, especially in Washington, D.C.? On January 18, 2025, CBS Saturday Morning aired a segment on the subject, interviewing me.
The host conceded that the majority of people dislike the buildings but observed that some modernist architects wish to preserve them nonetheless. I responded, “I don’t think the world is a museum of architecture. The world is a living, breathing place. These buildings are affecting everybody on a daily basis, and they are taking up valuable real estate… There are some buildings that are so ugly that only an architect could love [them].”
I also praised the Executive Order President Trump issued in his first term: “I think that Executive Order was very important and highly popular with the public. It pointed out that the architecture of the American democracy is classical architecture. So this Executive Order wished to return federal architecture to that tradition, which essentially lasted from the Founders up until World War II.”
You can watch the video on X HERE, YouTube HERE, and CBS’s website HERE.
Conservative author and speaker Eric Metaxas interviewed me on the January 17, 2025 episode of his radio show. We discussed the future of the arts in America, among much else. Metaxas commented, “I think Justin Shubow would make a crackerjack spectacular choice . . . as the new head of the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts]. And I hope President Trump, who I know listens to this program religiously, will heed my cry.”
