Public art and architecture worthy of our great republic. We do so by advocating for the Classical Tradition in civic design. We believe that tradition is unparalleled in its dignity, beauty and harmony, not to mention its legibility to the common man. It is no accident that the Founding Fathers chose the classical style when designing the Nations Capital and its core buildings of government. The founders sought to harken back to republic rome and democratic athens and knew that classical architecture was time honored and timeless. The National Civic arts Society Works to continue and expand upon the founders vision for the Nations Capital in federal design generally. I perhaps dont need to tell you that since the 1950s, washington, d. C. Has been marred and disfigured by federal buildings and memorials that do not comport with the citys classical heritage and identity. For instance, there is the hirshhorn museum, which looks like a gun slit bunker. Then theres the brutalist fbi building which i called the ministry of fear. At the same time, some of our National Memorials are not only not classical, they do not reflect the consensus view of the subject commemorated. For example, the Martin Luther king jr. Memorial is wholly secular, a socialist realist work that fails to include the reverends most famous lines such as, i have a dream. More recently, the eisenhower memorial under construction, a memorial to a traditional and modest president , is a gargantuan deconstructionist assemblage of towering cylindrical pillars and an unintelligible woven steel screen that is bigger than the Hollywood Sign in los angeles. Ever since the construction of the Vietnam Veterans memorial, a memorial to an admittedly divisive war, the general trend in america is that memorials must not show signs of valor or heroism. As an egregious case in point, the united flight 93 memorial in shanksville, pennsylvania, fails to commemorate the heroism of the passengers on that flight. This is the case despite the fact that those passengers likely saved the plane from crashing into a core building of government. Instead of being commemorated as heroes, the passengers are remembered as nothing but victims. As you will see tonight, the new world war one memorial breaks that trend. While it rightfully acknowledges the magnitude of the suffering and loss in the war, at the same time it depicts the soldiers bravery in the crucible of battle. It is not yet another victim memorial. And at the same time, it tells the story of a country on the rise, confident and powerful. But it is more than that, the memorial is monumental and beautiful and sends a clear, patriotic and compelling message with easily comprehensible symbolism and allegory. We hope it will set a new trend in american commemorative works. You might ask how did such a design come to be selected . The answer lies in great part to the fact that the World War One Centennial Commission chose to hold an open blindly review Design Competition that, unlike some other competitions, was not biased against classical design in favor of modernism and postmodernism. The competition jury was also carefully selected and the leadership of the commission played a crucial role. They are to beat heartily commended. And speaking of such leadership, i now turn things over to edwin fountain, vice chairman of the world war i centennial commission. Thank you. [applause] thank you, justin. And thank you for the stimulating conversations we had along the way before and during the competition and selection process. You are not here to listen to me. Sabin is much more interesting. What he has to show you is much more interesting that i can. But i want to talk about the process that led to sabins selection as the sculptor for the world war one memorial. This here, this is the rendering of the overall memorial site. If you do not know where it is, this is Pershing Park across the street from the Willard Hotel at the far end of pennsylvania avenue, just one block from the white house. It was an existing memorial to the commander of the American Expeditionary forces in world war i. This was the site that congress authorized us to redevelop as the National World war one memorial. And in undertaking that project, we began with three constraints. The first was, as you see, this has to be not just a memorial, but a memorial within a while functioning urban park. Unlike the venom vietnam veteran memorial and the korean memorial, which are standalone memorials in a blank space of grass, here we had to also serve a city park function, which helps channel the ultimate selections we made. The site itself is within a very complex urban environment. The neighbors to this site are the Willard Hotel, the washington hotel, the sherman memorial across 15th street, the department of commerce, the Wilson District building, Freedom Plaza and the j. W. Marriott. Very distinct and different urban structures, urban spaces. This site had to harmonize and be complimentary to those sites. A third constraint the developed along the way was that we were instructed to preserve the existing part. That in itself is an interesting object lesson in modernist design of urban landscapes. We resisted, but had to ultimately yield to the inevitable, and so we had to work within the contours of that existing park. That further drove channelled our selection. So that meant that a memorial based on an architectural form was pretty much a nonstarter. That would just never work in a site like this. It meant that, in the end, there were a lot of interesting designs that we looked at that ultimately were discarded. About two of the five finalists i said i would love to see this park built, but just not here, not on pennsylvania avenue, not on this park of the district of columbia. Within those constraints, we had two key and related choices at the in sampson of the Memorial Development process. The first that justin alluded to was, do we go by open competition or do we have some sort of prescreened competition, either where we have a request for portfolios and then select designers with the design to come later . Or do we choose a number of established firms with a track record in these kinds of projects and then invite them to submit their Design Concepts and proceed from there . That is largely what happened in the eisenhower memorial project. We are closely studied that. We largely agreed with a critique that justin and the National Civic arts society made about that process. And frankly, we thought the Vietnam Veterans memorial competition was a success story. And so we went on that route for a variety of reasons. The second choice was whether to put our thumb on the scale, whether to prescribe certain parameters in terms of the forum or the style of the memorial at the outset of this open blind competition. Did we want to prescribe that it would be in one particular motif for another . Did we want to prescribe that it would have these elements or whatnot . In the end, we opted to leave all of that relatively on stated. We wanted a variety, a breath of memorial concepts because we did not know what might be out there. So we did not come into this prejudging that it would be a classical or a figurative design. My own personal inclination was in that direction, but we were humble enough to know that we didnt know what we might want and we wanted to throw the field open to see what might come to the door. Ultimately, we received 360 submissions from around the world. I learned in this process that chinese architects entered these Design Competitions in droves. I was very nervous that we might have one or two chinese submissions. I suspect that they were along the more, whats the word, Creative Solutions that defied certain laws of gravity in physics. In the end, we wound up with five u. S. Based firms, which i was pleased by, but that was not a prerequisite. There was one submission that i remember that had an absolutely beautiful rendering of a sculpture in the round. Just exquisitely done. We paid a lot of attention to, but ultimately discarded in part because it rested within an architectural form that, again, was not just appropriate for the site. But the sculpture itself, it was wrong in theme, but the scale and artistry of the sculptor was undoubted. I learned later that that sculptor was sabin howard. But we rejected his submission. So we had five finalists. I will skip over that process, although i do want to call out joe. Joe was the architect who won the Design Competition. [applause] what joe did was come up with the park solution. He contemplated about 300 linear feet of sculptures. He photoshopped reference samples to show what it might be, but he did not attempt to depict a particular narrative or set of images or whatnot. It was just sort of an insert sculpture here approach to the design. The jury saw the merit to that and it appealed to the commission as well. One of the selling points was that opportunity that it afforded for large figurative sculpture. Why was that important to us . To me at least, and i think to the commission, it was for a number of reasons. The first was that commemorating an event that happened 100 years ago, we wanted the memorial to be of the time that it commemorated. Although all the veterans of that war had long past, not long, but had passed by the time we embark on this memorial, we wanted it to be recognizable to the participants in the conflict that it was commemorating. The second is, more than the other National War Memorials that we have on the wall, a world war i memorial needs a very strong educational element. I happen to like the Vietnam Veterans memorial a great deal, as do many others, but it and the world war ii memorial in a very different way, they are both very abstract memorials. Viewers today do not need to be told what those words were about or what the wars mean, although i query 50 years from now what someone will make of this massive black wall with 55,000 names inscribed on it and wonder why that memorial form was chosen. But world war i, given the lack of a place that war has an american memory in american cultural consciousness, there needed an unaired narrative element to convey the magnitude of the American Service and sacrifice and that war, which was the third bloodiest war in our history. The american deaths in that war exceeding those in vietnam and korea combined. There needed to be in educational and narrative component to this memorial that conveyed that, that inspired further self education on those points. It needed a visual element. Weve seen dozens of movies about the civil war and about pickets charge at gettysburg. Weve seen dozens of movies and Television Miniseries and tv shows about world war ii, be it band of brothers or the longest day or saving private ryan. We saw mash, the vietnam war came to us through our tv sets. We dont have in our collective memory that visual representation of world war i. We needed to show that that war was every bit as savage and buddy in our soldiers every bit as heroic and courageous as those and other wars that we commemorate. Only figurative sculpture would do that we thought. And so the educational and visual components combined in this cinematic narrative that sabin will show you in a moment. It shows in in an impressionistic way what the war looked like, and also tells the story of the American Experience in the war and that is why his design appeal to us. In the second stage of the competition, we said to joe, you know, it might help if you went out and found a sculpture. So joe went to the sculptural yellow pages and found sabin howard. Joe obviously saw what we saw, which is just based on his portfolio, sabin is one of the finest figurative sculptors working the world today. I did not come prepared to give you his bio. He was raised in italy, which gave him an unfair head start in terms of training with classical sculptors. He has studied and taught in philadelphia and elsewhere around the country. He has been a practitioner of this form for 30 years. As you will see in his work, its absolutely exquisite. What we were looking at was these very greco roman looking nude torsos that he did. Here we were asking him to expand from single forms to what ultimately became a 38 figure work. Rather than static forms in very classical poses, going to this very kinetic, violent, turbulent, interlocking groups of figures that were far beyond what he had done to that point. Had i known what a gamble we were taking at the time, im not sure we wouldve had the nerve to do it, but he has repaid that gamble in spades. And so without further ado, i will start with there, sabin and you can go. I will turn it over to sabin howard. [applause] all right. Thank you for coming tonight. So, let me give you a taste of where i started and where my mind was before the project and where it progressed through the project, because i was unprepared for this project when it began. As the title is so aptly named, a soldiers journey, its a heroes journey, and i really had to grow with the project to be able to pull off something of such magnitude that would appeal to not only washington, but also the world, because the world comes to washington to learn about the history of this country. As edwin so aptly stated, i began as a class and worked out of the studio in the south bronx until joe sent me a very polite email on september 14th asking me to partner up with him, and i did. So i was doing figures that were very static and esoteric. Im just going to run through these so you get an idea of what i was doing. I was casting in bronze, and bronze beats mortality. Its a way to create something that outlasts everybody in the room. I learned my craft and my art in italy. Im half italian, my mother is italian and my fathers american. My education came from a man who came out of the Bauhaus School in germany and that element about structure of the figure and how figure is developed as an architectural system using organic forms, is how i perceive reality. So my education had a large part in how i see reality. So im showing you these because this is how i think. The way that i saw single figure was the way that i eventually was able to compose a competition with 38 figures. I might add that that composition that we finally came up with was not the first one. It was around the 18th one. And there were quite a lot of meetings that i drove back to new york to rebuild and start from scratch. These are anatomical drawings that you can see i am thinking well below the surface of the human body. There are a couple of things that really informed my work. First, and foremost, like edwin said, what are we depicting . Human beings. Were depicting the human experience. We are showing what it means to be human. Thats a pretty deep statement, because you do not see a lot of that these days. Theres not a lot of figurative art out there. Everything is abstract. And the other element, everything is enhanced. Reality is enhanced by digital technology. So this is the journey that i wanted to talk to you about tonight. These are some of the drawings, but i was doing before. Where i used actually people. This is a man, mark, from new york. This is the structural element that i applied to my thought process. This is a way of observing reality, and transferring it into the art realm. So heres the project that we finally have in front of us. We didnt start here, its been a long journey, actually. And i realize today, it was the first time i realized i drove to washington and i did not have to go through a bureaucratic meeting. I was really relieved. It was good to be in the car for the first time. Im very honest. So i got this project, and i thought, okay where do i go . Where do i look for . I used the same way of creating art, my methodology, that i had for the previous 30 years. I went to the computer, and i looked for pictures of real people. What did they look like, whats the emotion that was there . So i started finding imagery that actually made me realize how human this war was. The girl with a hug reminds me of my daughter. The soldiers above remind me of my friends that i rock climbed with. And i began to realize that there is a Common Thread here, do what ive been doing. So when you get into a project like this, there are a lot of voices. It suggested perhaps that i look for a figure that reminded him of a famous marine. I found this picture, and i sent it to him. So a dialog begins. So you are not working in a studio, by yourself. You are engrossed in this conversation with thousands of people, and it can all be rather confusing. Especially when this is a very foreign subject to you. World war i was not really taught to me, besides the european history class and it did not have the sort of death that i might have for American History or other elements of history. So i am looking at these images, and im beginning to realize that there is something really painful going on here. So this was my first attempt. This was the architectural element with sculptures underneath. That began in 2015. Then, entering with joe, i did these drawings. There are a couple of things that i chose to look for. A low high level, giving a monumental feel, a very dynamic quality to the figures. But this was not really the direction that we were going to take. This was in 2016, in january, i looked a lot younger back then. You did to, joe. Its really been quite an epic voyage. And when i talked a bit, in one of the things that really pushed him and inspired him, was this piece by a sculptor who created this in front of the capital building. I dont know if youre aware, this but this took 20 years to create. The two sculptures. And then he died two weeks before the unveiling. So thats a testament to the amount of energy that is necessary to create something of such