The Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas must be incredibly proud that one of its graduates, Joseph Weishaar, just three years out of school, has won an international competition to design a World War I memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial will be located in Pershing Park on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Here is the lede of the New York Times article on the memorial:
WASHINGTON — It is a war without any living veterans, fought on another continent and overshadowed by subsequent, more bloody American campaigns.
But in this city of monuments and memorials, where millions of tourists come each year to pay tribute to the nation’s past, the absence of a major site commemorating those who fought in World War I has ignited a push to rekindle Americans’ collective memory.
“World War I was frankly overwhelmed in the national consciousness by first the Depression, and then World War II, and the Cold War,” said Edwin L. Fountain, the vice chairman of a congressional committee responsible for commemorating the centennial of American involvement in the World War I, which began in April 1917. “At the same time, it was arguably the most significant event in our nation’s history other than maybe the Civil War.”
Weishaar, 25, is now with the Chicago firm of Brininstool & Lynch, which was also selected for the Walton Family Foundation’s Northwest Arkansas Design Excellence Program, the foundation’s design initiative for public spaces and nonprofits in the region.
The United States World War I Centennial Commission selected Weishaar’s design, “The Weight of Sacrifice,” which includes a central lawn walled on three sides by bas-relief sculptures of scenes from the war interspersed with and quotations, from 350 entries. Sabin Howard, a New York sculptor, worked with Weishaar on the design. The memorial, which is being built with private funds, will cost between $30 million and $35 million and is expected to be complete by the November 2018 anniversary of the end of World War I.
Phoebe Lickwar, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at the University of Arkansas, will be on the full design team.