[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2230492302.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Friday President Donald Trump said his administration had selected West Potomac Park as the site for his proposed \u201cNational Garden of American Heroes,\u201d\u00a0an outdoor sculpture park meant to play home to statues of 250 Americans of note.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs reported by the Washington Post<\/em>, the announcement raised questions as to whether congressional approval would be required. \u201cWest Potomac Park, which sits along the Potomac River near the Jefferson Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, is among the most tightly controlled federal lands in the District of Columbia,\u201d the Post<\/em> reported. \u201cLarge portions fall within the \u2018reserve\u2019 area governed by the Commemorative Works Act, in which any new memorial project would probably require congressional approval as well as review by federal planning bodies. White House officials have previously said they will follow \u2018all legal requirements and approvals\u2019 for the planned garden but have not specified whether that includes obtaining congressional approval.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe law stipulates that commemorative cannot be authorized until after the 25th anniversary of an event or death being memorialized\u2014a problem for proposed sculptures of Kobe Bryant, Whitney Houston, and Antonin Scalia, all of whom died fewer than 25 years ago.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Post<\/em> also reported, citing sources who chose to remain anonymous to discuss plans not yet disclosed, that the administration has has chosen architect Michael Curtis as the garden\u2019s lead designer, in addition to a team that includes the architects Michael Franck and CJ Howard as well as sculptor Brian Kramer and urban planner Dhiru Thadani. None of them responded to the Post<\/em>\u2019s queries about their purported selection.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/trump-sculpture-garden-potomac-park-1234785838\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-2230492302.jpg?w=1024″] On Friday President Donald Trump said his administration had selected West Potomac Park as the site for his proposed \u201cNational Garden of American Heroes,\u201d\u00a0an outdoor sculpture park meant to play home to statues of 250 Americans of note. As reported by the Washington Post, the announcement raised questions as to whether congressional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1942350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}