Designing Washington: Art for Democracy

The National Mall in Washington, DC, like the ancient Acropolis in Athens and the Imperial Forum in Rome, is an epic landscape that embodies civic, architectural, social, and political values and aspirations. What does the history of the National Mall, in the heart of our nation's capital, reveal about us as a people and a country? In this six-week course we'll look at the original visionary 1791 L'Enfant Plan inspired directly by Constitutional principles; at the role of the Mall before, during, and after the Civil War when the capital grew in importance; the new vision of America embodied in the 1902 McMillan Commission Plan; the burgeoning activities, from Civil Rights protests to cultural festivals and Fourth of July celebrations, that add layers of meaning to way we understand the Mall; and in recent years the proliferation of war memorials and ethnic-centric museums that aspire to add to, and "correct," the story we tell on the Mall. One component of each class will be a discussion of evolving questions (and answers) about the meaning of American identity: How do vehement artistic and architectural debates over design, style, and meaning mirror contemporary discussions about who we are as a people, about how we tell our country's history, and about the importance of public open space to American democracy.