The US’s National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has published a call for artists for President Donald Trump’s pet project, the National Garden of American Heroes. The ambitious sculpture park is planned to include 250 life-size, “realistic” statues of as many historical figures—a seemingly random selection that ranges from George Washington and Martin Luther King Jr to the late basketball star Kobe Bryant and the television host Alex Trebek. The budget of up to $200,000 per statue comes from recently cancelled NEH and National Endowment for the Arts grants. Interested artists have until 1 July to apply.
The call for artists—or “Funding Opportunity for Individuals”—stipulates that statues must be made from marble, granite, bronze, copper or brass. Artists will be responsible for sourcing and paying for their own materials. They will be given a short eight months to complete their statues; some artists could be commissioned for up to three of them. It is unclear if artists may eventually be assigned to less popular “heroes” than the ones for which they submit their applications.
As for the applicants themselves, the call states that they must be US citizens. In addition to the usual statement, work samples, résumé and recommendation letters, submissions should include an “explanation of delinquent federal debt”—student loans, taxes and child support are cited specifically.
The site of the sculpture park is as yet undecided. It appears that the final list of heroes is not ready yet either, but the whole project is optimistically scheduled for competition just before the US’s semiquincentennial on 4 July 2026. The sculptures alone are estimated to cost taxpayers around $30m.
Meanwhile, the average American is not pleased with the direction of Trump’s cultural offices. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that a majority of the public disapproves of the president’s attempts to control culture. Pollsters concluded that many people are “uncomfortable with his moves to punish universities he sees as too liberal and to install himself as the board chair of the Kennedy Center”—66% of respondents said they did not think Trump should control important cultural institutions like national museums and theatres. Although the poll’s Republican respondents tended to believe that withholding funding from universities was warranted (57% of them said so), only 26% thought the president should be in charge of cultural institutions.
In a more specific and poignant statement of disapproval of Trump’s takeover of US arts and culture, Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, told Fabrice Bousteau of the French newspaper Le Quotidien de l’Art earlier this week that the president’s recent legislation targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives “does not apply” to the Met. Hollein further noted that, as the Met is an independent and non-partisan entity, it would not make any changes to its programming to appease the Trump administration.
