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Vietnam Memorial Center Gets Another OK

Rendering courtesy Ralph Appelbaum Associates
THE U.S. COMMISSION OF FINE ARTS has given a conditional thumbs up to the design concept for an underground museum and education complex adjacent to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a project that's come under heavy fire from critics.

As The Post's Michael E. Ruane reports, the concept, which will feature artifacts and photos of those killed during the war, has already been green-lighted by the National Capital Planning Commission. If all goes according to plan, groundbreaking would be in 2010. But the proposal still needs additional OKs to move forward.

While the project's supporters say the center is necessary to give the Vietnam War memorial meaning as the generation that fought in the conflict fades into history, critics say it will crowd the already crowded monumental area near the Lincoln Memorial and detract from the powerful Vietnam memorial.

The Post's architecture critic, Philip Kennicott, wrote earlier this year that the project will be an "insulting disservice" to Maya Lin's universally acclaimed memorial:

The virtues of that structure — its austere elegance, its compelling reticence on the war itself, its refusal to glorify or demean its subject matter — lie in everything it doesn't say. But ever since Lin's design was made public in 1981, it has been subjected to efforts to subvert its integrity, to make explicit things that were meant to be abstract, and to give the memorial a traditional "viewpoint" on the subject of war.
At least right now, it seems the critics are on the losing side of the war over the future of the city's monumental core.

» "Memorial Center Design Clears Hurdle" [WaPo]
» EARLIER: "Three Projects on or Near the Mall Could Reshape More Than the Vistas" [WaPo]

Rendering courtesy Ralph Appelbaum Associates

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COMMENTS (5)

  • "Maya Lin's universally acclaimed memorial"

    Woah, that's not true. There are lot of people that really hate it. A minority, no doubt, but enough to make the phrase "universally acclaimed" not accurate.

    By Anon , Posted October 19, 2007 12:12 PM

  • OK, perhaps you're right on the misuse of "universally" ... but I think when you measure up the design controversies of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the World War II Memorial, Maya Lin's design for the Wall will be more broadly praised generations from now than the World War II Memorial. No? The conventional wisdom about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is that it says so much in such a simple design and a more powerful design.

    By mgrass , Posted October 19, 2007 12:32 PM

  • Agreed.

    Although I think there will always be a group of people who view it as unnecessarily focused on the cost of the war without acknowledging the objectives.

    I'm not one of them, but I just think there are enough of them to make the word "universally" inaccurate.

    By Anon , Posted October 19, 2007 12:50 PM

  • Glade to see something Happening Keep Me updated Here at www.vietnamvets.biz

    By Patrick Sulivan , Posted October 19, 2007 10:28 PM

  • There is a web site named The Virtual Wall (TM) at www.VirtualWall.org that has thousands of tributes, poems, and photos of the fallen of the Vietnam War. The not-for-profit site is not run by the same organization that is planning the Vietnam Memorial Center.

    By A Veteran , Posted October 20, 2007 3:41 PM
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