President Eisenhower’s granddaughter said Tuesday that he would not have liked the proposed design for the Eisenhower Memorial, in part of her testimony on Capitol Hill as she and family members press to get a new design on the drawing board.
“I don’t think he’d understand it and I don’t think it would appeal to him,” Susan Eisenhower said of the proposal featuring 80-foot-tall-by-100-foot-wide stainless steel tapestries that depict etchings of Eisenhower and landscapes from his boyhood home in Kansas.
“He’s well-known for not having much time for modern art,” Eisenhower continued, adding, “He hated billboards.”
Her comments came during a U.S. House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands hearing on the memorial designed by famed architect Frank Gehry. The Eisenhowers want Gehry to redesign the memorial, calling it “the only way to make this memorial acceptable to the American people.”
However, the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, which selected Gehry, 83, did not ask the Los Angeles-based architect to testify. Instead Gehry sent a letter largely defending his design, saying he’d “be open to exploring other options” if the commission and the family agreed parts of the memorial were “inappropriate.”
But granddaughter Anne Eisenhower expressed frustration with Gehry’s prior outreach, noting that he had given the four grandchildren a week’s notice to meet with him in California. The Eisenhowers are mostly based on the East Coast.
“I know he’s a celebrity, but we’re also very busy,” Anne Eisenhower said after the hearing.
The subcommittee’s oversight hearing was to ensure the process to select Gehry was open and transparent, a point disputed by some. Chairman Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican, also said he held the hearing to gauge whether Congress should mandate a delay in the memorial’s development schedule.
Gehry’s design, which also features a statue of Eisenhower as a young boy looking at stone reliefs of Eisenhower the general and president, has sparked controversy in recent months. Brig. Gen. Carl Reddel, executive director of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, said that depiction honors the president’s legacy.
“[Eisenhower] is looking out at what he is to become — a great general and a great president,” he said.
The $100 million memorial will be located on 3 acres near the National Mall at the intersection of Maryland and Independence avenues and is awaiting approval by the National Capital Planning Commission. A vote on preliminary approval was recently removed from the commission’s April agenda in light of the congressional hearing.
