Existing comment:
Art for the People
Congress ordered sculptures installed at Meridian Hill Park long before the park's completion. So many sculptures were authorized that Horace Peaslee, the park's architect, called for a moratorium on installations. He told the Commission of the Fine Arts that the park's master plan was in jeopardy unless future memorials were restricted to decorative urns designed for that purpose.
Nature, vandals, and thieves have long threatened the park's public art. For years, Joan of Arc did not wield her sword. Serenity lost her nose, a toe, and a hand. The Armillary Sphere, which was once located south of the reflecting pool beyond cascades, was removed after it was vandalized.
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On January 6, 1922, the bronze statue of Joan of Arc, sculpted by Paul Dubois, was dedicated in the center of the Great Terrace. This gift from the French people celebrated both the history of the alliance between the United States and France and the suffrage of American Women, who won the right to vote in 1920.
On December 1, 1921, a statue of Dante Alighieri, author of the epic poem, The Divine Comedy, was dedicated in the park's Italian hillside garden area on the 600th anniversary of the poet's birth. The statue was a gift of Carlo Barsotti editor of an Italian American newspaper, in the name of all immigrants from Italy. The bronze figure is a replica of the original, unveiled in New York City that same year and sculpted by Ettore Ximenes of Rome.
Jose Clara's marble figure, Serenity, was dedicated in the Grotto on March 12, 1925. Charles Deering, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, donated the sculpture to honor the career of his friend and classmate, Lieutenant Commander William Henry Schuetze. Shuetze is remembered for his part in the 1882 expedition to Russia to retrieve the bodies from the ill-fated USS Jeannette, and later for his service aboard the USS Iowa in the Spanish American War. |