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D.C. Gets its Gehry

Catesby Leigh

Washington, D.C.’s cultural apparatchiks have long hankered for a Frank Gehry showpiece. On the eve of the new millennium, the director of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery implored Gehry, then basking...

Monumental Contrast

Catesby Leigh

In the annals of monumental sculpture, James Earle Fraser’s equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt hardly ranks as a masterpiece. The Rough Rider is portrayed in frontiersman’s garb and flanked...

Restoring American Statuary

Catesby Leigh

The White House recently mandated the creation of a National Garden of American Heroes to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The garden, according to the...

Against Architectural Relativism

Catesby Leigh

Google “Trump,” “federal architecture,” and “Albert Speer” and you’ll get a boatload of results, thanks to recent leaks of a draft White House executive order entitled “Making Federal Buildings...

Venice Afloat

Catesby Leigh

An observer of a Spenglerian bent might just write Venice off, taking the floods that afflict the city with increasing frequency as the finishing touches on a long-running spectacle...

Building to No Purpose

Catesby Leigh

Together we can shape the future.” So proclaimed a construction fence poster at the gargantuan new Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s Far West Side. But who would want a...

The Florentine Pietà

Catesby Leigh

In the late 1540s, an aging Michelangelo embarked on what he intended to be his culminating sculptural work, commonly known as the Florentine Pietà. Still heavily tasked with official...

A Memorial to Forget

Catesby Leigh

Monuments have always been intended to embody the past and elevate the spirit, but the new $700-million National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan is a downer...

Reviving Sacred Sculpture

Catesby Leigh

The statue of a slender young John the Baptist, seated on a rock with a lamb at his side, only a little over three feet tall and carved about...