A potential executive order aims to make federal buildings beautiful again, and President Trump’s critics are losing their minds.
Last week, art enthusiasts and journalists began prognosticating about a draft of an executive order titled “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.” Its mission would be to keep new federal buildings from becoming modernist, brutalist eyesores such as the current structures housing the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the United States Postal Service. Of the FBI building, Trump once said, perhaps accurately, “Honestly, I think it’s one of the ugliest buildings in the city.”
Under this executive order, new federal buildings would have to follow the more aesthetic Greek and Roman style of the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the Treasury Building — among others.
“For too long, architectural elites and bureaucrats have derided the idea of beauty, blatantly ignored public opinions on style, and have quietly spent taxpayer money constructing ugly, expensive, and inefficient buildings,” wrote Marion Smith, chairman of the National Civic Art Society, which spearheaded the project. “This executive order gives voice to the 99 percent — the ordinary American people who do not like what our government has been building.”
More Roman columns and fewer slabs of concrete? Sounds like an aesthetic choice we should all be able to get behind — but not in the year 2020. Today, everything has to be controversial. Here’s just a sampling of some of the outrageous headlines on the subject:
Artnet: “President Trump wants to make ‘Federal Buildings Beautiful Again’ with a new executive order that echoes fascist history.”
Forbes: “The dark side of Trump’s architectural fantasy.”
The Guardian: “Will Trump make architecture great again? The dark history of dictator chic.”
The New Republic: “Duncing about architecture: The ignorance and racism behind the right-wing push for ‘classical’ federal buildings.”
What’s so fascist and racist about wanting buildings to be beautiful?
“Critics quickly pointed out how the order recalls similar mandates by fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler, who each turned to classical aesthetics as a way of promoting nationalism,” notes the article in Artnet. Never mind that leaders such as Thomas Jefferson were also proponents of the classical aesthetic. And never mind that Washington already houses many beautiful classical buildings, and fascism hasn’t arrived here just yet. (Well, most people don’t think so, anyway.)
In the New Republic, an architectural critic writes that “the reversion to a mandatory classical style reflects the architectural philosophies of white supremacists online.” So, wait — ugly modernist architecture combats racism? At least that would provide some justification. But then the author clarifies, “Neo-classical architecture isn’t always a right-wing dogwhistle.” Well, that’s good to know.
If a Democratic president were to issue an executive order favoring the classical style, critics would likely respond that it’s simply a matter of taste. If Trump says there are too many ugly buildings in D.C. (which there are), it turns him into a racist dictator.
And the Left wonders why Trump got elected in the first place.
