Tocqueville claimed that Americans build grandiose public monuments to compensate for the ordinariness and, to speak bluntly, the insignificance of individual democratic lives (Democracy in America,Vol. II, part 1, c. 12). The architectural results are sometimes preposterous. Nevertheless, he compares Americans with Romans. Presumably their “greatness, enlightenment, and real prosperity” will make these democrats grow into the role. The now “pompous name of Capitol” would soon seem appropriate. But we have become vulgar Imperial Romans in our public architecture. Not content with the glorious Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln monuments, we have added others, which show how empty our souls have become—worse…
|civic art, Civil Rights Movement, Emancipation Memorial, Freedman's Memorial, March on Washington, Martin Luther King Memorial, National Civic Art Society, Tocqueville, Vietnam Memorial
Monumental Disasters
by Ken Masugi|
