| | |
| | |
| December 2, 2008 Dear Coalition Friends, Yesterday, we sent you Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher's favorable review of the new Capitol Visitors Center, which opens this afternoon, and in particular the exhibits that "signal to the city's cultural and political leadership that meaty content can still succeed in the effort to educate citizens who grow up with only the slightest whiff of civics in their schooling." The question of content and national narrative came up as well at last night's lively forum at the National Building Museum: How could we improve the American story told in the Mall's monuments and memorials? There was a certain understandable skepticism about who could develop a national narrative. The recent reopening of the National Museum of American History and now the Capitol Visitors Center gives us an opportunity to explore the options and value in employing what Fisher calls "the power of narrative" to help shape a more informed, active citizenry -- not only in our museums but also on the public open space of the Mall. And now, for something complete different... See below three mixed reviews, each with a different angle, of the Capitol Visitors Center in today's The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, excerpted below, with links provided to the full review. ************ THE WASHINGTON POST The Capitol Addition That Takes Too Much AwayBy Philip Kennicott Over time, the U.S. Capitol has taken on two very different faces. What was once deemed the back side of the building -- facing the Mall -- became a grand, ceremonial front, with the addition of dramatic stairs, terraces and landscaping that emphasized its prominence on a hill. To the east, the old "front" of the Capitol became, by contrast, more modest, accessible and pastoral. Before ground was broken for the new Capitol Visitor Center in 2000, you could stand on the east side and imagine cows and sheep grazing, as if in the foreground of a romantic landscape painting. This duality -- grandeur and authority vs. simplicity and openness -- also expressed an ideal of government. To survive, a republic must have authority, tradition and ceremonies. But it must also have its yeoman side, which allows the people to wander the halls of power as equals with their legislators. The "truth to power" side of the Capitol, the East face, has been demolished by the new Visitor Center, a tragically misconceived and overscale addition, which opens today. The East face has become something entirely new, with a false and slick pomposity created by an impressive promenade over an imposing bridge, which seems to cross a kind of moat. It is a historical and aesthetic jumble, a nonsensical place and a gross disfigurement of one of this country's most important and iconic buildings... In an unsuccessful effort to limit the visual impact of the new space, it was placed underground. Entry for most visitors is down two sloping walkways on either side of the old East Capitol Street alignment, which is now elevated on a bridgelike structure . Elevators for handicap access have been placed on either side of the bridge, rather like guard towers. The power of the old landscaping -- an 1874 masterpiece of design by Frederick Law Olmsted -- is lost amid the visual clutter. The lesson that Washington never seems to learn -- and alas, will confront once again if ill-conceived plans for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial visitor center proceed on the Mall -- is that there is no such thing as an underground building. The need for access, and egress, elevators and skylights means that even below-grade buildings intrude on the landscape. The intrusion of the new Visitor Center is extreme, and creates a cacophony of historical suggestions. Where Olmsted once had a loosely aligned allee of tulip poplars, there are now formal lines of spindly trees leading to the underground entrance. Where Olmsted's allee both framed and obscured the view of the East front -- an elaborate peekaboo with the Capitol that made it seem farther away -- the new bridge makes the entrance rigid and formal. The effect is French, more Versailles than Washington: a tightly controlled procession down a linear axis, now framed by the elevator-guard towers. The "moat," the below-grade well where visitors enter, adds to the weird historical cacophony. Is this a grand baroque avenue? Or a medieval defense device? For those who don't remember the old landscaping, this grandiloquent new view of the Capitol might not seem so bad. And anyone who has visited the Capitol during the dog days of summer, or the cold of winter, will be grateful for the chance to wait indoors for a tour. But the loss of green space, the loss of old trees, the loss of the gentle, democratic approach to the Capitol is huge. The East front feels as if it has been chewed up by ramps and walkways and bridges, like the entrance to a badly designed airport.... Popular enthusiasm for the new HyperCapitol migt well dispel the long years of grumbling about its cost and delays. Changes to the Capitol have always been controversial. Even the dome, which is now its iconic feature, was deemed by some critics as too overbearing when it was designed in the mid-19th century. A country that for more than two centuries has swung between left and right, radical and reactionary, has always been fundamentally -- and properly -- conservative in relation to this enduring symbol of its government. But, despite years of delay, you can't help but think that a grand and essential building was changed too quickly, too radically, without sufficient thought and planning, and with little real understanding of how much was at stake. The loss is enormous. Who knows whether the United States will ever again be rich enough, or smart enough, to undo the damage. ************ THE NEW YORK TIMES The Pursuit of Expansiveness Guides the Capitol’s New Visitor Center By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN WASHINGTON — Standing in the middle of Emancipation Hall — the expansive lobby of the new Capitol Visitor Center that opens here on Tuesday — you can see why the construction of this underground addition to the United States Capitol ran so heftily over its budgeted time and money. The center’s 580,000 square feet cost $621 million — more than double the planned amount. The ceremonial groundbreaking was in 2000... But the one thing that you don’t feel here is what the place so insists on: that this is an extension of the Capitol and a suitable entrance into it. The sandstone used on the center’s walls was deliberately chosen for its imperfections and discolorations so it would resemble the sandstone used in the Capitol’s grand rotunda of 1824 (which was originally meant to be painted over); but that is paying attention to the trees rather than the forest. Despite the informative exhibition, in many ways — physically, conceptually and politically — Emancipation Hall is the inversion of the Capitol’s glorious rotunda where visitors were once led to begin sampling the poised grandeur of this place. That inversion is so strange it almost overshadows the fact that something like this center was a necessity. The visitor entrance to the Capitol turned into a choke point once security became a major issue, not just because of the 9/11 attacks but also after the killings in 1998 by a deranged man who walked through the main doors and began shooting. A visitor center was also needed to satisfy the demands of contemporary tourism: plentiful bathrooms (26 here), a restaurant (with 530 seats), an indoor lobby where large crowds (up to 4,000 people) could be channeled into smaller spaces and gift shops. Something more informative was also needed to supplement the traditional tours of the Capitol’s public spaces (visits to Congressional sessions must be separately arranged through senators and representatives). So the overall plan — an introductory film, a tour of the Capitol, a visit to the exhibition, all the amenities — makes a lot of sense. But if you go on one of those tours, you can see how different the center is from its origins, from the smallest detail to the largest. The rotunda is modeled on the Roman Pantheon, while overhead, on its great dome, is a fresco, “The Apotheosis of George Washington,” in which the divine figures of Fame and Liberty accompany Washington’s rise to immortal stature. In that space and in others that still draw gasps, you can sense the kind of ambitions that lay behind the building. In the building’s mixture of plain functionality and elaborate decoration you can feel the tension the place represents, trying to combine democratic sensibility and noble sentiments, principles of equality and high aspiration. The Capitol was a pioneering effort — the first, perhaps, since the ancient world — to strive for something like democratic splendor. Like a medieval cathedral it has also taken centuries to evolve, not without controversy, over the course of its many reconstructions and expansions. The same effort is knit into the history of the country itself, its flaws and virtues visible like the veins of the building’s sandstone. Alluding to such themes, perhaps, the Visitor Center calls its display of historic documents (which will be rotated every six months) a “Wall of Aspirations” because it highlights Congressional efforts to move the country “toward a more perfect Union.” Now the wall includes Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Congress asking it to finance the Lewis and Clark expedition, a ceremonial copy of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and John F. Kennedy’s speech to Congress promising a manned Moon landing within a decade... Unfortunately the exhibition’s effect is dwarfed by Emancipation Hall, which dissolves any sense of drama. Its name is a tribute to the slaves who built the Capitol in its earliest incarnations, but the hall doesn’t give a hint of the nature of liberty, the struggles needed to achieve it, or the magnificence of the accomplishment. It is like a characterless way station hoping to achieve with expanse what it cannot achieve with thought. The center’s 24 statues (taken from Congress’s collection of two from each state) also testify not to the largest national perspective, but the most particular and peculiar interests. The figures include Philo T. Farnsworth of Utah, the “father of television”; Jeannette Rankin of Montana, who, in the House, cast the lone vote against war with Japan after Pearl Harbor; and Ephraim McDowell of Kentucky, a surgeon who helped draft his state’s constitution. Such demographically chosen figures, of course, are part of the national story; some may even deserve tribute. But none deserve apotheosis, and in the new welcoming space of the Capitol, they are woefully out of place. They reflect not aspiration but accommodation. They are individuals in a clamoring crowd. That is one vision of democracy, and it may even reflect what visitors will feel like in this vast and undistinguished hall. But in contrast, within the Capitol itself, that clamor is hushed with purpose. ************ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL essay includes some interesting historical perspective. In the Nation's Capital, An Uninviting Addition . . . By CATESBY LEIGH Washington-- In principle, the Capitol Visitor Center -- the vast underground addition to the U.S. Capitol that opens today -- has something for just about everyone. It responds to our changed post-9/11 world with enhanced security for America's great temple of democracy, and the people inside it, mainly through the screening of visitors in sunken quarters over 300 feet away... And yet the CVC, the most important addition to the Capitol in nearly 150 years, is fundamentally misconceived. By definition, underground architecture amounts to a substandard habitat. Stylistically, the architectural design by the Washington office of RTKL Associates is a banal exercise in modernistic, ersatz classicism. And on the educational front, the CVC presumes to substitute a high-tech museum "experience," featuring a good deal of self-serving institutional propaganda, for the more intellectually resonant content encountered in books... ... Not only should the CVC's public portion, at least, have been built above ground, it should have been built as a less-spacious addition to the Capitol's west front. It should have provided a dignified public entrance as well as screening and waiting areas, period. After all, the Capitol was drawing three million visitors a year before 9/11 without a cafeteria or high-tech gallery... Moreover, the design concept for an appropriate, secure western entry to the Capitol was readily available: a monumental gateway, situated well in front of the building. It was proposed by the first architectural titan to work on the Capitol, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, in 1811. Latrobe's gateway design features a Doric portico flanked by pavilions built of rusticated masonry. Employing massive columns under the central pediment, such a design would be well suited to a "hardened," blast-resistant structure, and also to the huge scale of the Mall. Though supplanting Olmsted's elegant central steps and terraces, the gateway would have provided an inspiring, secure new approach to -- as well as screening at a safe distance from -- the existing building... The CVC could have been a grand, monumental expression of America's defense of civilization in a world endangered by barbarian fanatics. Instead, Washington chose to dig itself into a hole. Mr. Leigh writes about public art and architecture for the Journal. |
|
Copyright © 2008 National Coalition to Save Our Mall Inc. All Rights Reserved |