War Memorial – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Aero Memorial

Posted by Cindy on March 4, 2018

Mar 042018

Philadelphia has the largest collections of Public Art in the United States and much of it can be viewed with an audio tour

I was particularly drawn to this bronze sphere which sits opposite the main entrance of the Franklin Institute and is dedicated to aviators who died in World War I. Inscribed with the Latin names of constellations and planets, this Paul Manship sculpture Aero Memorial illustrates the signs of the zodiac in a style that recalls both classicism and Art Deco.

The idea for Aero Memorial was conceived by the Aero Club of Pennsylvania, which donated modest funds for the purpose to Fairmount Park Art Association (now the Association for Public Art) in 1917. Fundraising took many years and the work did not begin until 1939 when the Art Association contacted Manship.

By the time he was fifteen years old, Paul Manship had decided he wanted to become a sculptor. Born in 1885, in St. Paul, Minnesota, Manship attended Mechanical Arts High School, he also took evening classes at the St. Paul Institute School of Art but left to work as a designer and illustrator.

In 1905 he enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City and after a few months of formal study became an assistant to the sculptor Solon Borglum, whom he considered a critical influence on his work. After further study, he received a three-year scholarship to study in Rome where he fell under the spell of Greek antiquity and the beauty of classicism. He traveled extensively before returning to the United States in 1912 launching a career that would last fifty years.

“I like to express movement in my figures. It’s a fascinating problem which I’m always trying to solve,” he said. He also noted, “I’m not especially interested in anatomy, though naturally, I’ve studied it. And, although I approve generally of normally correct proportions, what matters is the spirit which the artist puts into his creation—the vitality, the rhythm, the emotional effect.”

Some of Manship’s well-known works are the Prometheus Fountain in Rockefeller Center, the gates to the entrances of the Bronx Zoo and the Central Park Zoo, and the Time and Fates Sundial and Moods of Time sculptures installed in front of Trylon and Perisphere at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City.

Passage of Remembrance

Posted by Cindy on April 6, 2015

Apr 062015

Memorial Court
Civic Center

In 1932 when the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building were built the project was supposed to include a memorial to veterans. The project ran out of money, and one was never made.

However, during this time the octagonal lawn in the Memorial Court has held earth from lands where Americans fought and died. This stone octagon, now encloses the earth. The Memorial has been designed so that it can be opened to accept newly consecrated earth from battlefields of the future.

In 1935 that War Memorial Complex architect Arthur Brown, Jr., recommended landscape architect Thomas D. Church be engaged to complete the Memorial Court. Church, a world renowned landscape architect, know for his gardens reflecting the Beaux-Arts tradition completed the design in 1936. His drawings reference a “future memorial” to be added in the octagonal area of the Memorial Court.

Soils from World War I battlefields were consigned there at the time of its completion. A similar ceremony depositing soils from World War II battlefields took place following the 1945 signing of the United Nations Charter in the Veterans Building. And in 1988, veterans groups held a ceremony interring battlefield soils from Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, China, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Guam, Italy, Laos, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Prior to beginning construction of the San Francisco Veterans Memorial, the soil from the center of the octagonal area of the Memorial Court was carefully removed and safeguarded.

The Young Dead Soldiers, a poem also used at the Presidio Cemetery Overlook, is a fitting poem for this spot.

The project artist was Susan Narduli of Narduli Studio. The project was completed October 2014 with $2.5 million of private donations.

West Coast War Memorial to the Missing

Posted by Cindy on September 10, 2013

Sep 102013

Presidio
Lincoln and Harrison Boulevards

This memorial is in the memory of the soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coast guardsmen, who lost their lives in service of their country in the American coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The memorial consists of a curved gray granite wall decorated with a bas relief eagle sculpture on the left end of the memorial and a statue of Liberty on its right flank. On the wall are inscribed the name, rank, organization and State of each of the 412 American missing whose remains were never recovered or identified.

The architect was Hervey Parke Clark, a Detroit native. Mr. Clark studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to San Francisco in 1932 and practiced until 1970. He was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Other than the war memorial in the Presidio, Clarks work included buildings at Stanford University and the University of California at Santa Barbara and the United States consulate in Fukuoka, Japan.

The Landscape Architect was Lawrence Halprin who has appeared in this website several times before.

The sculptor was Jean de Marco, who won the 1965 Henry Hering Memorial Award for his work here. Jean de Marco was born on May 2, 1898 in Paris, France. While in Paris he served as an apprentice at the Attenni and Sons Studios, a statuary, stone and marble carving atelier. De Marco studied at the art schools of Paris from 1912-1917 and at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs. After serving in the army in 1917 he continued his studies in casting and finishing.

De Marco came to the US in 1928 and settled in New York. De Marco taught at Columbia University, The National Academy of Design and Iowa State University. He died in 1990.