In the continuing saga over the proposed Eisenhower Memorial, new Congressional legislation would halt any additional federal funding for Frank Gehry’s design and send the memorial back to its planning phase. (Read more background on the memorial controversy here.)  Congressman Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation, introduced the bill, which Susan Eisenhower—Ike’s granddaughter—supports. “We are very respectful that this is a memorial for the American people,” she told the congressional committee last week. “I think we might be in a different position if the public hadn’t been so very strongly against this design.”

Last June, the Program on American Citizenship teamed with the National Civic Art Society to present a panel discussion on the important role that memorials play in civic life, using the recent controversies over the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the proposed Eisenhower Memorial to guide the conversation. You can watch the full discussion between panelists Michael J. Lewis (Williams College), Roger Scruton (AEI), Bruce Cole (Hudson Institute) and Diana Schaub (Loyola University Maryland) here. In the January 17th issue of the Witherspoon Institute’s Public Discourse, the National Civic Art Society continued the conversation.

Some recent news happenings in the world of citizenship:

In the last few weeks, The Weekly Standard has published two articles discussing Dwight D. Eisenhower and the proposed memorial in honor of him, designed by architect Frank Gehry.

Over the past year, the recently dedicated Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Memorial and the planned Eisenhower Memorial have renewed controversy about the meaning and purpose of public memorials. What do America’s memorials and monuments tell us about our nation and our identity as citizens? How should we memorialize past events and individuals?

At an event on Friday, May 18, 2012, that was co-sponsored by AEI’s Program on American Citizenship and theNational Civic Art Society, a distinguished panel discussed the important role of public memorials in civic life, using the recent controversies over the Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Memorial and the proposed Eisenhower Memorial to guide the conversation.

In the latest in the long saga regarding Frank Gehry’s proposed design for the Eisenhower Memorial (more background here), yesterday the House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies unveiled a draft bill that would deny the $59.8 million budgetary request by the Eisenhower Memorial Commission.

In today’s New York Times, David Brooks takes a look at how the monuments we build reflect our national character–and how, given the disappointment of recent monuments (e.g., the World War II, FDR, MLK Jr., and the proposed Eisenhower Memorial), more thought about that leadership would be a good thing.

As criticism of the proposed memorial has grown, so too have attacks on the critics. Writing in the Architectural Record about the Program’s recent event on memorials, Ben Adler characterized the monument’s critics as simply conservative “curmudgeons” who will “always revile Modernism for both ideological and aesthetic reasons.”

Responding to Adler in the same journal, the Program’s Gary Schmitt and Cheryl Miller write, “In defending architectural Modernism, Adler falls into the very trap he warns against.”

Missed Friday’s discussion on “Monumental fights: The role of memorials in civic life”? Don’t worry–you can watch the video of the event here, read about it it in the Washington Examiner, or check out our event re-cap.

“On Armed Forces Day, let us salute the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who perform their duties with impeccable courage, commitment, and character, and recognize our moral obligation to serve them and their families as well as they have served us.”

Yesterday, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission saw a revised proposal for the Eisenhower Memorial, designed by architect Frank Gehry. (More background on the proposal’s controversy here and here.)

The Washington Examiner reports that revisions to the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial will be revealed on Tuesday.

In our preparation for May 18′s discussion panel at AEI on “Monumental Fights: The Role of Memorials in Civic Life” (register at the link), we bring you another essay by a panel participant discussing the importance of proper memorials to honor our great statesmen. In this selection from First Things, Eric Wind and Erik Bootsma, both of the National Civic Art Society (with whom we are co-sponsoring the event), raise concerns about Frank Gehry’s proposed Eisenhower Memorial and the way the design process was conducted.

As we look forward to our May 18 discussion panel on “Monumental Fights: The Role of Memorials in Civic Life” (register at the link) with the National Civic Art Society, we will be showcasing essays on the subject to help us prepare for the discussion. Today’s selection is by panelist and Williams College professor of art Michael J. Lewis, who writes on “The Decline of American Monuments and Memorials” in this month’s Imprimis.

Over the past year, the recently dedicated Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Memorial and the planned Eisenhower Memorial have renewed controversy about the meaning and purpose of public memorials. What do America’s memorials and monuments tell us about our nation and our identity as citizens? How should we memorialize past events and individuals? In this event, co-sponsored by the Program on American Citizenship and the National Civic Art Society, a distinguished panel will address these questions and comment on the MLK and Eisenhower memorials.

In the April issue of The American Spectator, AEI’s Roger Scruton joins the long line of criticism in arguing against Frank Gehry’s design for the Eisenhower Memorial.

The on-going saga of the Eisenhower Memorial continues, which we’ve covered before here, here, and here. Now, conservative commentators George Will, Ross Douthat, and David Frum join the line of critics who think that Frank Gehry’s design to commemorate the nation’s  34th president misses the point.

Mid-week roundup:

• More on the Eisenhower Memorial: The Washington Post has a favorable review of the proposed memorial, hailing architect Frank Gehry for his innovation, playfulness (“Gehry has produced a design that inverts several of the sacred hierarchies of the classic memorial, emphasizing ideas of domesticity and interiority rather than masculine power and external display…”), and democratic style (the focus on Eisenhower’s childhood shows that while “Eisenhower was a great man, [...] there were other Eisenhowers right behind him, other men who could have done what he did, who would have risen to the occasion if they had been tapped…”). If you’re looking for a view on the memorial different than the ones we’ve presented thus far, this review is worth reading.
• Continuing our citizenship lessons from abroad, Program Director Gary Schmitt has a post remembering Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic who died on Sunday. As Schmitt recounts, “The fact that Europe today is virtually ‘whole and free’ is in no small way due to the life’s work of one man, Vaclav Havel.”
• Harvard’s Institute of Politics has some new polling data on Millenials’ views of politics and public service.
• And finally, the Washington Post reports that military voting has increased since 2006, and found that 77 percent of troops registered to vote in the 2010 election–compared with 65 percent of Americans at large who registered. Despite these gains, though, more than 112,000 military voters never received the absentee ballots they requested for the 2010 voting cycle.

We’ve written before about the criticisms of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, and hinted at controversies to come regarding the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial. Well, come they have.

In last week’s Washington Post, Katherine Boyle describes the Eisenhower family’s reaction to the proposed memorial: to quote granddaughter Susan, “We have some serious concerns. [...] I don’t think my grandfather would be comfortable with the scale and scope of this design.”

As you may remember, the design, by Frank Gehry, features 80-foot woven steel tapestries and large steel columns, 11 feet in diameter, that will outline the four-acre park. Gehry takes inspiration for the park’s theme from a homecoming speech Eisenhower made in 1945, in which he began his talk by saying that “because no man is really a man who has lost out of himself all of the boy, I want to speak first of the dreams of a barefoot boy.” Eisenhower’s boyhood was spent in Kansas–and so, therefore, the giant tapestries will show images of Kansas in winter.

As Jim Ceaser has written, monuments act as one of the main forms by which we as a polity seek to foster the memory of acts–and people–passed. If this is true, and if, as Susan’s sister Anne Eisenhower posits, that “any memorial should memorialize the person who, in theory, is being honored,” it’s difficult to to imagine exactly what memory or idea of Eisenhower this memorial holds up for posterity.

It’s interesting that when one visits the Eisenhower Memorial website, one is greeted by the picture that we have here: General Eisenhower speaking to men of the 101st Airborne Division before they parachute into France as part of Operation Overlord on June 5, 1944. It’s a moving, emotional scene–the last photograph, undoubtedly, for some of the men pictured–and it’s no wonder the memorial website chooses it to welcome visitors. It’s striking that the proposed memorial carries none of its gravitas.