Renowned architect Frank Gehry calls the steel backdrop he designed for the new $120 million Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial a “tapestry,” but former President Eisenhower’s family refers to it as an “iron curtain” instead. Art is in the eye of the beholder, but one viewer who saw photographs of an August 2011 mock-up submitted to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (EisenhowerMemorial.net) described it as “a rat’s nest of twisted steel.” Another suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that “as a lasting tribute to a great president it should be completed and installed along the 38th parallel to ensure that North Korea never ventures within eyesight.”

If Gehry gets his way, the metallic scrims will be suspended from 80-foot-tall columns opposite the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on Independence Avenue. Larger than Los Angeles’ iconic “Hollywood” sign, the metal curtain purports to portray idyllic scenes from Eisenhower’s Kansas childhood. But the farmhouse is partially obscured by a river of twisted metal that looks more like concertina wire that amber waves of grain.