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SEARCHING HISTORY FOR THE BEST WAY TO COMMEMORATE
POWERFUL MEMORIALS COMMEMORATING OTHER GREAT SACRIFICES LIE AT OUR FINGERTIPS, WAITING TO BE EMULATED.
The time is upon us to build our own Parthenon," prominent art historian Joan Bren Connelly recently suggested in a Wat7 Street Journal commentary. She referred to the great temple of Athena erected as a monument to the triumphant recovery of Athens from the devastation wrought by Persian invaders in 479 B.C. In the wake of the terrorist atrocities of September 11, Connelly observed, a similarly monumental gesture would seem to be in order.
But what does it mean to build a twenty-first-century Parthenon? Do you hire an architect or sculptor who operates on the assumption that modern times demand uniquely modern solutions? Or do you seek out designers who rely on the forms and conventions that have characterized the art and architecture of the West since the Greeks?
Until the Great Depression, there was a widespread consensus in favor of such cultural continuity in American civic art and architecture. This wholesome respect for the universal, timetested qualities of classical art produced generations of handsome buildings-from the humble Spanish mission churches with their simplified baroque forms to the Roman grandeur of the Progressive Era's state capitols and train stations. Given the nation's recent, mostly disastrous, experience with memorials, that earlier consensus now looks like a matter of common sense. As the nation considers what sort of memorial might best do justice to September 11, the time is right to review some of the precedents. How have master designers commemorated grief, heroism, and noble sacrifice in times past?
Deeply moving expressions of pathos appeared in ancient Greek sculpture. On their tombstones and sepulchral steles (upright stone slabs with relief carving), the Greeks infused the tragedy of death into scenes of everyday life with unforgettable nobility. We encounter a man standing by his seated wife, who gently clasps the fringe of her garment and stares into space in anticipation of their fated separation. In another relief, a young man with a sorrowful little brother or servant beside him raises a hand in a farewell gesture, holding a pet bird in the other hand. Elsewhere, a youth with his favorite hunting dog sniffing the...