President Donald Trump has focused so much of his second term on that it’s often hard to keep track of each proposal. Now his planned 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery is back in the spotlight after the Commission of Fine Arts ― made up of Trump appointees ― voted last month to approve designs for the project.
Critics of the arch, estimated to cost , have called it a “vanity project” aimed at serving the president’s ego. The gargantuan gilded design has also elicited comparisons to North Korea’s 197-foot Arch of Triumph and the in Turkmenistan featuring a of dictator Saparmurat Niyazov.
Following the vote on Trump’s arch, House Democrats introduced a bill to block its construction and the use of any federal funds to pay for it.
Like many of Trump’s architectural endeavors, the triumphal arch is giving more Cheesecake Factory than civic monument. But to further underscore why the proposal is so controversial, it helps to understand what a triumphal arch actually is and what it has always meant.
“The triumphal arch emerged as a form of monument in ancient Rome to make permanent ,” said , an art historian and author of “The Monument’s End: Public Art and the Modern Republic.”
“It was meant to permanently commemorate the moment of an emperor’s return to the capital city in triumph from wars abroad. In other words, the point was to commemorate an individual, not a nation or even a collective of citizens.”
That distinction matters enormously in the...
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