In the end, the Korean War Veterans Memorial cost more than $18 million.39 Hyundai Motors of America gave the largest corporate donation, $1.2 million. Samsung Information Systems and a handful of other Korean corporations also gave generously, but most of the donations came from individuals. A Dear Abby letter in 1988 raised more than $400,000; a congressionally approved Korean War Memorial coin raised over $8 million; and the Korean War Veterans Association worked tirelessly to raise funds for the memorial. The pages of its aptly named newsletter, The Graybeards, were preoccupied with fundraising for the memorial from January 1986 through the dedication in 1995.40 Even as they expressed frustration about the pace of progress and the ever-increasing costs, the Graybeards editors pushed constantly for donations. In fact, they dedicated much more space to fundraising than to other issues related to the memorial, most notably the design. They spent precious little ink on the details of the design. The only design-related issue that came up with any regularity was concern about fair representation across military branches. Mostly what the editors and letter writers expressed over and over again was the desire to see the memorial completed on the Mall. And as successful as they were as fundraisers for the memorial, their power to influence the design of the memorial, had they been interested, seems likely to have been quite limited. In 1991 when they pushed for more progress and more accountability in the memorial process, the memorial board chair publicly berated them, and their representative on the advisory board resigned from the organization with an angry letter.41
Congress’s stipulation that veterans select the design was crucial to the memorial process and perhaps more consequential for the memorial than the stipulation that private monies be used. A jury of well-known architects, landscape architects, artists, and critics had selected the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the fact that the VVM board did not include any veterans had been the subject of some controversy. This likely inspired the desire for an all-veteran board. Certainly, in its own unscientific way, the survey conducted at the dedication of the VVM made clear the desire for an all-veteran jury. And those who responded got their wish.
Given that 5.7 million people served in the Korean War–era military, President Reagan had a good pool from which to form his committee. Reagan had disliked Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Memorial from the start. His secretary of the interior, James Watt, had threatened to delay groundbreaking for the memorial unless modifications were made to her design. The Frederick Hart sculpture of three Vietnam War era soldiers was a last-minute, controversial addition because Reagan and Watt insisted on the addition of heroic figures. In selecting veterans to serve on this board, Reagan had a chance to set the record straight on the Mall. Not surprisingly, the veterans he chose were not the kind of veterans who made up the membership of the Korean War Veterans Association (KWVA) but the highest ranking and highest achieving Korean War veterans. He appointed eleven men and one woman, including one African American and one Latino, four colonels and three generals, five CEOs (most notably, the CEO of Occidental International Corporation, a petroleum company with more than $22 billion in annual profits), and representatives of selected veterans organizations, including the KWVA.42 The board chair was General Richard Stilwell, a four-star general and the son of a four-star general who had earned his nickname, “Vinegar Joe,” through toughness and acidity.43 These folks were charged with building the memorial, but, like all memorials on the Mall, it would need the approval of the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission.
In response to the McMillan Plan for the Mall, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts was established in 1910 by an act of Congress. The commission is charged with “giving expert advice to the President, Congress and the heads of departments and agencies of the Federal and District of Columbia governments on matters of design and aesthetics, as they affect the Federal interest and preserve the dignity of the nation’s capital.”44 The commission is composed of “well qualified judges of the fine arts” who are appointed by the president to a term of four years. Recent chairs of the commission include William Walton and J. Carter Brown, who served from 1971 to 2002. Brown, from the socially important—and once slave-trading—family that endowed Brown University, was among the most prominent forces in the American art world in the second half of the twentieth century. He served as the director of the National Gallery for twenty-three years, during which time he tripled its endowment and added the modern I. M. Pei addition. He also led the Commission of Fine Arts for more than thirty years, serving under seven presidents. Described as “America’s unofficial culture minister,” he had a great deal of influence in Washington. Brown was one of the strongest advocates for Maya Lin’s VVM design and, as such, had pushed for a particular, modern commemorative aesthetic on the Mall.
Also building on the logic of the McMillan Plan, the National Capital Park Commission was established by an act of Congress in 1924. In 1926, it was reestablished as the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and Congress gave it comprehensive planning responsibilities for the national capital. The twelve-member commission now “includes five citizens with experience in city or regional planning, three of whom are appointed by the President of the United States and two by the mayor of the District of Columbia.”45 The commission has long been made up of architects, designers, and planners with extensive cultural capital, that is, Washington’s cultural elites interested in the capital as a grand national and international stage. This commission had also vigorously supported Maya Lin’s design.
As if all these players did not sufficiently complicate the memorial process for the Mall, Congress passed the Commemorative Works Act in 1986. Congress had recently approved three full-scale memorial projects, and demand for many more was on the rise; besieged by the demand for new memorials, Congress sought to quell the memorial fever, or at least rein it in, with specific guidelines. The act stipulates that “an event or individual cannot be memorialized prior to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the event or the death of the individual” and that “military monuments and memorials may only commemorate a war or similar major military conflict or a branch of the Armed Forces. . . . [M]onuments and memorials commemorating lesser conflicts or a unit of the Armed Forces are not permitted.”46 Thus, for the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the stage was set for a showdown between Reaganera military elites and Kennedy-era cultural elites. President Reagan’s twelve-member KWMAB, the Commission of Fine Arts, and the National Capital Planning Commission were required to approve a design together.
THE FIRST DESIGN
In 1988, an open design competition was held. The American Battle Monuments Commission produced, in consultation with the KWMAB, an elaborate document that specified the conditions of the competition and provided guidelines for submission, a statement of purpose, and a statement of philosophy of the memorial. Building on the language of the legislation, this statement of purpose read in part, “The memorial will express the enduring gratitude of the American people for all who took part in that conflict under our flag. It will honor those who survived no less than those who gave their lives, and will project in a most positive fashion, the spirit of service, the willingness to sacrifice and the dedication to the cause of freedom that characterized all participants.”47 Giving lives, serving, willingness to sacrifice, and dedication to freedom—this language reflects the conversation around the legislation, that service and sacrifice trump the war itself. The “cause of freedom” is as close as the language gets to specifics about the war, but “freedom” hangs as something of a free-floating signifier. Freedom for whom? Freedom from what? Freedom in what sense? Where are the specifics about freedom and this war? None of these questions are raised or addressed in the competition guidelines or the conversations that would follow about what the memorial might be.
In describing the memorial to potential designers, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) and the KWMAB included language that added an additional purpose for the memorial: “These patriotic virtues have been common to those who served their country in other times of national crisis—and must not be lacking in the instance of future emergencies. Therefore, the Memorial must radiate a message that is at once inspirational in content and timeless in meaning.” This memorial, then, was to honor the sacrifices soldiers had made and to ensure the willingness of future soldiers to give their lives in the era of the all-volunteer military. It also needed to exist out of time—to be timeless—and