The Arts of War and The Arts of Peace

The Art Deco statuary group consists of two separate elements, Valor and Sacrifice, which frame the entrance to Arlington Memorial Bridge.

The Neoclassical statuary group consists of two separate elements, Music and Harvest and Aspiration and Literature, which frame the entrance to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway.

The silt would be used to reclaim the Tiber Creek tidal inlet, building up the land south of B Street and west of the Washington Monument grounds to a height great enough to act as a levee.

Major traffic jams clogged the narrow and decrepit Highway Bridge during the November 1921 dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, angering members of Congress and President Warren G. Harding.

[14][15] The United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) had the legal authority to review the design and architectural style of the bridge.

The commission was especially pleased that Kendall proposed extending the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway past its planned terminus at E Street NW south to Ohio Drive SW[17] (a road completed in 1916).

[18] Kendall's plan called for the parkway to pass through the plaza (rather than beneath the Arlington Memorial Bridge via an underpass) to access Ohio Drive.

For the bridge's entrance, the AMBC and CFA add two 40-foot (12 m) high square pylons inscribed on all four sides with images representing national unity and common purpose.

[26] To assist the commission in making up its mind, the Army Signal Corps produced life-size photographs of mock-ups of the pylons, and erected them on site for the CFA to view in late September 1928.

[28] Kendall fought to retain the eastern terminus pylons even as the CFA continued to move ahead with plans for equestrian statuary.

[33][34][35] Museum curator Joel Rosenkranz says Friedlander's commission came directly from the firm of McKim, Mead & White, and mentions no competition.

[32] The CFA further discussed the equestrian sculptures at its meeting on December 11, 1929,[36] and Kendall gave up on his attempt to restore the pylons by the end of the year.

[41] Valor was based on a study Friedlander had completed in 1915–16 while a fellow at the American Academy in Rome, while Sacrifice was created especially for the bridge commission.

[46][47] Full-size photographic mock-ups of the bridge statuary (again made by the Army Signal Corps) were viewed on-site by the CFA on July 1, 1931.

On January 23, 1946, CFA member and sculptor Lee Lawrie visited the Friedlander workshop with an official of the National Park Service.

[30] In January 1948, the National Park Service informed the CFA that about $1 million in authorized funds existed to complete Arlington Memorial Bridge.

[59][60] Fraser reported on his summer 1947 survey of foundry costs, and at the urging of the Park Service the CFA submitted legislation to Congress asking for an initial $185,000 appropriation to begin the casting process.

The National Park made a survey American foundries, and told the CFA that few had been converted from war work back to art casting.

In October, officials of the National Park Service and sculptors Fraser and Friedlander traveled to Italy to inspect various foundries and negotiate a deal.

Customs officials, however, were not made aware of how to properly house and care for them, and the plaster statues stood outdoors in cold, snowy, and rainy weather for several weeks.

With Fraser and Friedlander's permission, he made repairs to the plaster models (taking care to not offend the Italians or make them aware that they had inadvertently damaged them).

The foundries wanted to use joints that while less expensive to cast would not wear well, and the sculptors were forced to intervene to achieve the required quality.

[55][68] In his remarks following the unveiling, President Truman pledged to remove certain military, economic, and other constraints on Italy imposed by a 1947 peace treaty.

[45] Facing Rock Creek Parkway from the Lincoln Memorial traffic circle, Aspiration and Literature is on the left and Music and Harvest is on the right.

Aspiration and Literature consists of a nude male on Pegasus' right with a toga over his left shoulder and an open book in his trailing right hand (symbolic of literature), and on Pegasus' left a nude male (both shoulders draped with a toga) aiming a bow backward (symbolic of aspiration).

The newspaper editorialized that they were created and approved by a "tight little clique of uninspired and not particularly gifted academicians who constitute the National Sculpture Society".

Workers discovered that because the interior of each pedestal was exposed to bare earth, excessive condensation built up inside the hollow statues.

[77] Extreme temperature changes (due to daytime heating and nighttime cooling of the bronze) and proximity to the river also led to extensive condensation inside the statues.

[74] The corrosion problems were solved by removing the steel bolts and angle irons and replacing them with bronze components,[77] and by cleaning as much gypsum as possible from the statue interiors.

Corrosion was seen developing at several cracks, seams, and small holes, and in some cases gypsum and water migrated out of pores in the bronze to the outside.