it lives in a complicated place, in a complicated time. and so it's very delicate and hopefully subtle. and hopefully in the spirit of the man, the modesty that is all over the history of this man. >> so, you said you did a lot of reading to bring yourself up to speed. >> yeah. >> were there any surprises, things that you didn't know before? >> well, i knew the broad picture, but just finding out what the man was really like was very powerful for me. >> and, bob, the decision-making process for you about getting involved in this? >> well, i've known -- frank says that we've known each other for many years, and i've watched his career and been a huge

admirer of his work, and it was a real honor to be able to have a chance to finally do something with him. i also kept going over and over through eisenhower's life and trying to find the one point that somehow could maybe balance this span of life. you can say that math, "a" can be a line this long and "b" can be a line that's that long. and yet i find this "a" point in this man's life that seemed to maybe balance with his longer lifespan. and i kept looking for that subtext or that text, what they could be. and as frank said, the beautiful

thing that kept coming back was this man who was the general and an important man in the history of war, and he's the president, yet throughout his life you can see the little boy in him. and that's so touching. it has been said that genius is childhood recovered at will. and this is then eisenhower. and it comes in various things that he says throughout his life. so, that became this "a" point. >> in his last speech i guess when he went -- >> yeah, it's so touching.

tell them. >> but he came back -- and i can't quote it. >> to abilene. >> and said, kind of, it's amazing that a barefoot boy could have his life -- have this incredible life. but he wasn't beating his chest and saying -- >> no. >> -- hey, look at me. he was, like, going back to his childhood and saying, man, what an incredible experience i've had. and -- but all through it, all through it, i came back here because this is where i'm from. a barefoot boy. >> do you have the quote? >> yeah. the only quote i have is from the address where he says i come from -- carl can quote it. >> you are the director, carl. >> so how did that translate --

>> you have the lincoln memorial is so strong and it's one image. it's just etched in our brains. we have the washington memorial and it's this one monument, this one visual element and it's so powerful. so, i don't know. one of the great things about this country, part of the american myth is you say it's as simple as apple pie. jackson polak, you know, painted with house paint. abraham lincoln was born in a log cabin. so this idea of the barefoot boy from kansas, towards the end of his life has this way of reflecting of himself that he's

simply a boy from kansas. somehow it became very compelling. >> and it worked with the site, because when we started out, we had much more complicated images. we wanted to build a tapestry. we did a lot of research and the jacquard and the tapestries, and it was logical that it could be built with metal fibers, so -- if it couldn't be done, we didn't have a plan "b," so we had to really work it. and then when we realized we were 70 feet from the education building and they didn't like the idea of looking into the back of a tapestry, that we had to make the tapestry

transparent, which is very hard to do. with a jacquard loom. we managed to do it, but it lost its artistry. it became less -- it became more of a scene, and yet the fine arts commission, one of the commissioners mentioned, he thought that we ought to stay away from making a billboard, wh we wanted to have an artist do it, but if you ask an artist to do a tapestry like that, like chuck close, he would select the imagery so we were stuck. we couldn't find an artist that would do it. and lo and behold, there's a polish fellow, an artist from poland, this is kind of an all-purpose handyman and he's

worked in my office, and he does construction work. but whenever i've ever had a th strange together, he always comes to the fore. an try it, let me try it, let me try it. and i said okay, so then he made this. and it's gotten much better. this was the first try, and he studied albrecht dure's drawings and developed a language of strokes from the dure, and he applied it to the photograph we had of abilene. and it came out -- >> it's a landscape of trees. >> so why don't we look at -- >> want to look at it?

>> yeah. so that people can see this extraordinary tapestry. >> this was the -- >> they're seeing it here. >> i'm looking at it right there. okay. so this was the competition, and the competition -- excuse me, i'm going to put somebody's eye out. i better go this way. [ laughter ] >> i'm sorry. >> so this is the education building. there's the tapestry at one point. and then we were thinking of independence avenue, driving by. this is kind of like a theater, and maybe eventually you would find places to sit on the back end of the aerospace museum, which is not used at all. it's a beautiful terrace that

overlooks this thing. and we needed to hold up the tapestry, and the engineers told me i needed a ten-foot round column to do it, and so i decided at that point to make them in stone. when we did that, it sort of clicked into washington. i don't see it as a post-modern thing as much as a -- i mean, those columns are -- i think they're bigger than the ones in the pension building, in the -- whatever you call that building now. in this tapestry, we had v.e. day. so we covered that. we had eisenhower in the cabinet. we had eisenhower fixing a fence post, and we had talked about making reliefs -- stone reliefs. i was hoping they would get as good as the greek sculptures.

so that's the dream. and then we had this grove with the tree for a quiet place for eisenhower. as we proceeded, we pulled in the tapestry quite a bit on each corner so that -- and you could see the education building from independence avenue so it wasn't blocked out. and instead of these being parallel to independence, they kind of created the territory. and they sort of create the space because these buildings are very different designs. i mean, i don't know. some people don't like them. but i think we're trying to

create a terrain, and when bob came in with the abilene picture and said, we realize this is incredible fortuitous image to pick for this from a functional standpoint, because it allowed the most open space in the sky, so we could make it transparent, so the guys could look out and that it wasn't bombastic. it wasn't overpowering. it wasn't beating your chest eisenhower. it was just bringing the midwest scene. abilene is 400 miles from the geographic center of the united states. i don't think there's a midwest representation of the midwest. there's a lot of people out there.

so we pull these in, made it more modest, kept the cartway, and these trees, i think you can see it in the -- the cartway for maryland avenue that had to be protected for the view to the capitol. it's just a clearing in the trees, and then in the summer you have trees with leaves. unfortunately, we can't put leaves on the tapestry for summer. so it becomes a big park, a garden where people can come and relax. they're not being pummelled with information. it's very subtle. and the tapestry turned out to be a lot more transparent than we thought.

there's the cartway. there's one like it at princeton. i think it is a called einstein walk. it's from the president's house to the hall at the institute for advanced studies. that's kind of the image. that shows his house. that shows the grain elevator here. i thought that was the speech. the final image bob and i will go to abilene and take the picture. this is not -- it will be close to this, but it will probably -- and so this -- this was taking the dure picture and breaking it down that led to this. these are all handmade, and it's one guy.

so it's going to take him two years, and he's a brilliant artist. we pushed him hard at this point to be -- make it look like a tree. i think we pushed him too hard. we want it to be a little more artful. so you can see the strokes in the middle. and then look how transparent it is. so there it is up against the education building. so it's going to be very subtle when it's all done. it's going to be very quiet. it's going to say abilene, but it's not going to hit you over the head with it. and then finally the memorial itself can be very modest, like him.

>> maybe you want to tell them about that figure, too. >> yeah, why don't you talk about that. [ laughter ] >> so you have -- it's a little bit like a -- i work in the theater, and it's a little like a theatrical scrim which are used a number of times in various productions. so this gauze or this tapestry, transparent tapestry, will have placed in front of it a figure of eisenhower as this barefoot boy, as a youth. so it's -- i think to me it's probably not something that is the big headline that we know of eisenhower.

but, again, to me it was the one point that it kept coming back to that seemed to be really important. i made a work earlier in my career called the life and times of sigmund freud. and in reading about freud, i read something that when he was 68, when his grandson died, he said that something within him passed away forever. and he said years -- much later in london to anna freud, he said i never overcome the death of this 4-year-old boy. and it was in that year that freud developed cancer. it was this little thing that

kept coming back in my mind with freud, that it's not so much discussed in history books but really seemed to be that point where his balance was in life and times. and so this man who was a giant in many ways was a simple boy. so i think it's a poetic way of looking at eisenhower. >> it's a great image of hope for kids coming there. >> yes. >> i think that it's the american dream, barefoot boy from kansas is a world leader. >> and it will be life-sized, we think. he will be sitting on a wall. we're trying to find images that we found one of him like this. that we kind of like and how to make it. we're figuring out how to make

it. so we think we've got the essence of it. and it's very -- we think it's very powerful. and now we've got to figure out how to talk about him -- >> as a president. >> -- and a soldier, and we're trying not to make it an episodic thing like the roosevelt memorial where you go to one period and then -- we're trying -- >> as frank keeps saying, not to have three memorials, but just this one thing and then we have the reference to him. >> so now that we've got the other pieces and we have vetted the tapestry and the education people seem to be liking us again, they were really -- i mean, i don't blame them. they were kind of threatened. >> so is this your -- is this your first experience working with the federal government?

[ laughter ] >> yeah. >> so what's that been like? >> i loved the first meeting when the lady brought in a little time clock. and it went off in an hour, and she just got up and left. [ laughter ] and we had flown a whole bunch of people in. you know, we've had some help. dan file has helped us. where are you, dan? >> right here. [ applause ] >> and rocco himself, he was eisenhower's chief of staff when eisenhower was president.

at least he has a sense of washington and what's going on. i think mostly we've had good vibes from people, from the senators that we've met with. but the idea seems to resonate. i mean, we're not trying to jam something down people's throats. we're trying to make something that is lasting, that's in essence that represents this man's character. i think we're honing in on it. we're getting there, and that's a lot of pleasure in that. now we're just fitting in the rest of the pieces. we will tell those two stories. we will. we're not going to ignore them. >> but i think to me the

strength is that it's -- there's nothing more beautiful than an empty room or an empty space. i would say the best architecture, forgive me, frank, is no architecture. [ laughter ] >> i knew you. >> it's just space, and i think that that's the beauty of this idea is that it's space. and in our cities and whatever, so much is needed and not another blockbuster building, you know, but just space. and that's in the character of this man. i'm from texas. he was born in texas, and the landscape of texas is in all my work. it's in my head. it's a way of thinking. this landscape.

i met a woman who is a violinist a few years ago in taipei. she is from brooklyn, and i heard her playing in a concert, and she said to me afterwards, she said, you know, the brooklyn bridge is in my mind all the time. i was born by the brooklyn bridge. it's in my head. i said the landscape of texas is in all my work. so somehow this landscape is inherent in this great man. >> so frank, you have described this project as an emotional portrait of dwight eisenhower, using the power of architecture, landscape and visual art to tell this life story and to represent his strength and values. and at the same time, paying attention with the balance between respectful and boring. so talk about the boring piece. [ laughter ]

>> well, it's hard to comment on that. but i think expressing the man is not boring, and if we do it right, it will resonate and be strong. >> resonate is a good word. the history books have recorded him in a certain way, but this is something i think that we can reflect on in multiple ways. >> i think that there are people that think this is too big a space for eisenhower. he wasn't as important as that space. it's why does he have a space that's bigger than somebody else? he doesn't. he's just going to have a little plank with a little boy.

this is just an image to contexturalize and modify the location so that it can accept that little modest piece and not get lost in the hubbub of the city. i think it's going to be very modest. >> you know, let's see if i have this. >> what are you looking for? >> i said, in one of our meetings, if you take a space that's this big and you put it in a space -- >> that's what they thought i was going to do. [ laughter ] but if you put this in that space, this is bigger, because there's more space around it.

>> yeah. >> and that's sort of the idea. >> that's the idea. >> so the intent is to use content from carl's library to enhance the experience. >> carl is a living library. if i go have coffee with him and say, i would like to have a coffee, can you get me this kind of coffee, he said, well, eisenhower used to -- that's been the fun of this, the people involved. just fantastic. >> so this is still very much a work in progress. >> we're getting close. we have budget and technical stuff, and we have the landscape, which joe brown was here. where's joe? there he is. [ applause ] that's eda, landscape.

>> and attention to materials for the fabrication? >> well, right now we're talking about the columns being stone. that seems to be the right thing to do in this location. we're pretty close to our budget, so we're doing well. there's not going to be any -- the maintenance part of this is very carefully thought out. we're doing tests on the tapestry to ensure that it will last at least 200 years, but you can see it's pretty simple. you can just spray it and clean it. i don't think things are going to grow in it.

so it's just spraying that and maintaining a garden. there's no complicated waterfalls, or there may be a little fountain or something but -- to get the trickle, trickle of water, the sound of water, but i'm not sure. the lighting will be interesting, how you light this at night. and it looks different from behind and from forward. and it changes during the day. so it will be very interesting. it will have a different persona. >> i think it's going to be very -- >> i don't know if there's a night picture. there was -- >> beautiful at night. >> yeah, there it is. and you can see to the left, this shows the landscape down at the bottom, a building and the openness.

these are just tests of the various pieces. and we actually made -- tomas made a face of eisenhower's eyes in that material, and it's recognizable. so if we wanted to put figures -- we don't, but if we were, you know -- if we wanted to, if it became an issue, we're able to do it. so we're vetting this thing. >> so the side panels will be trees also? aroues. . you know, you can put eisenhower the general on one side and eisenhower the president. we tried it. i've got pictures of all this. when you do these things, the first thing you do is figure out the ten most obvious things to

do, and then you do them and look at them and then reject them. but it's -- that's the normal process for guys like us. >> does that include -- you talked earlier about other memorials. is there a particular memorial that you think is good? >> lincoln. >> absolutely. lincoln, washington. >> and maya lin. >> oh, beautiful. that's great. >> she was my student, so i'm proud. >> that's right. [ laughter ] >> that's right. >> she was a good one. >> is that the end of the slides? >> i don't know. that's the dure. so you can see where tomas got it. he was very clever to do that. there's the more intense part at the bottom, which is still transparent.