A Day Off, the Monuments Contest, and Indelible Art Moments

This is a brief bulletin today because I have a review due Tuesday for the art extravaganza known as the SITE Santa Fe biennial for The Wall Street Journal. It’s humongous, covering 20-some venues and including 71 artists, and after two visits I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole thing. If you are in the area before mid-January, it’s well worth your time to check out the main event and some of its satellite shows. In my 14 years in Taos, I’ve never encountered anything this ambitious in the Southwest.

An Agnes Pelton painting from SITE Santa Fe’s ambitious and freewheeling “Once Within a Time”

Allow me today to remind you of our monuments contest, announced last week. Here’s the scoop: As you may or may not know, page 820 of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes $40 million “for the procurement of statues” for the National Garden of American Heroes. “The national sculpture garden is one of the president’s central priorities for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year, and will feature life-size statues of 250 great individuals from America’s past who have contributed to our cultural, scientific, economic, and political heritage,” according to ARTNews. The garden is intended to “create a public space where Americans can gather to learn about and honor American heroes,” according to a press release from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Selected artists will receive awards of up to $200,000 per statue, which must be made of marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass. The New York Times previously reported that President Trump “directed that subjects be depicted in a ‘realistic’ manner, with no modernist or abstract designs allowed.”

But, you know what? To hell with all that! The challenge for readers is to come up with a design for a monument dedicated to the hero/heroine of your choice. I can’t give you 200 grand, but I will assure you ample space to let your imagination roam far and wide. Just send me a sketch and a bit of a blurb to describe your project.

If you need some inspiration, check out Parts One and Two of our monuments contest from five years ago.

Sandra Filippucci, proposed monument to climate activist Greta Thunberg from our 2020 contest

Please send sketches, plans, jpgs, etc. to ajlandi33@gmail.com by August 8, 2025.

And another opportunity for reader engagement. My Taos friend Susan Pasquarelli sent me this faded and ghostly photo of the visit she and her late husband, Charlie Price, enjoyed with Willem de Kooning in his East Hampton studio ca.1980. They had a fine old time, talking and reminiscing, with de Kooning, seated next to Susan, smoking constantly and telling tales from his drinking days at the Cedar Bar. And then Elaine de Kooning showed up and put an end to the party.

Scholar and musician Charlie Price, the late great Willem de Kooning, and artist Susan Pasquarelli, about 44 years ago

Do you have a photo you’d like to share of yourself with a famous or infamous artist, past or present? Please send it to me at the above email address with a bit of description.

And that’s all for now….