The Eisenhower Memorial

Shouldn't a monument to Dwight D. Eisenhower be absolutely the most boring, stolid, and traditional thing imaginable? You know, marble statue, some carved quotations, reflecting pool? Nothing against Eisenhower, but he was hardly a very radical or original thinker, and nobody alive in the 1950s had less to do with cutting edge art.

So I thought it was a little weird when the commission selected Frank Gehry to design the memorial: the master of weird curves to commemorate our most rectangular president?

But I kind of like this design. It is different from other memorials in an interesting way. The big screens will be translucent, made of woven metal, and they will carry pictures of the landscape of rural Kansas, Eisenhower's home. They will surround a park with trees and benches and the like.

As a bonus, it hides one of DC's ugliest office buildings, and that part of Washington (behind the Air and Space Museum) is desolate and desperately in need of something to liven it up.

The details of what will go in the plaza are still being worked out, and the commission says there may be some quotations. I wonder if they will put in his most famous words:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.