Gehry refines design for Eisenhower Memorial in DC

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Additional stone or bronze carvings depicting Dwight D. Eisenhower's accomplishments as Army general and president mark the latest creative changes architect Frank Gehry has made to his design for a planned memorial park honoring Ike near the National Mall.

Gehry's design early last year featured an image of Eisenhower in the Oval Office with his hand on a globe, as well as an image of Gen. Eisenhower addressing his troops before D-Day. He planned to use bas reliefs carved on stone blocks. Gehry added 9-foot-tall bronze sculptures in May 2012 after members of Eisenhower's family said the memorial park needed stronger sculptural elements to show the 34th president's achievements more prominently.

Now Gehry is returning to his original concept of bas reliefs in stone or bronze to serve as backdrops for the heroic-sized sculptures. The sculptural pieces will further depict Ike's work as general leading the D-Day landings at Normandy and as president signing the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to advance equal rights for African Americans.

A sculpture of a young Eisenhower sits on a wall nearby, looking out at his future accomplishments.

The Associated Press got an early look at the design changes, which were to be reviewed Wednesday by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission.

Gehry is still proposing that the memorial park be framed with large metal tapestries showing Eisenhower's boyhood home on the Kansas plains. But Eisenhower's family objects to the tapestry concept, saying last year that the metal material won't last forever and is "impractical and unnecessary."

Adding more images of D-Day and from a key moment of Eisenhower's presidency make the president's story more complete, said Daniel Feil, the project's executive architect.

"There's more of a dynamic going on because you have two different points in time depicted within one sculptural composition," Feil said of Gehry's revisions. "He's making it stronger. It's more powerful."

During his presidency, Eisenhower took a lead in desegregating public schools in Little Rock, Ark., and in Washington, D.C. So the imagery of him signing the Civil Rights Act, in particular, adds a new element of history to the memorial.

Above the presidential imagery, historians have proposed a quotation to be carved in stone to capture some of Eisenhower's values.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed," Eisenhower said in a 1953 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, speaking about the rising cost of Cold War-level military spending and the nation's priorities.

For the imagery of Eisenhower as World War II hero, historians proposed an inscription with this quotation from D-Day: "The tide has turned," Eisenhower said in an address to his troops. "The free men of the world are marching together to victory!"

The 12-member, presidentially appointed memorial commission has kept Gehry's metal tapestries concept as part of the design, despite objections from some critics who called it an "avant-garde approach" to memorial architecture. Eisenhower's family has called for a simpler design. Others have praised Gehry's concept for its innovation.

Retired Air Force Gen. Carl Reddel, the executive director of the memorial commission, said the combination of imagery from Eisenhower's Kansas roots, his achievements as supreme Allied commander in Europe and his two-term presidency capture Ike's unique role in history.

"What you have here is the Eisenhower story as the American story. It's a great way to provide a narrative," Reddel said. "Eisenhower was the last president born in the 19th century and the first one to look at reconnaissance photographs taken from satellites in space."

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Eisenhower Memorial Commission: http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org

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Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gehry-refines-design-eisenhower-memorial-dc-170658614.html

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