Preserving Memory Opening in D.C. a Success

Preserving Memory: America's Monumental Legacy opened in the District of Columbia with a reception on December 16, 2003. The Eleven Eleven Sculpture Space on Pennsylvania Avenue was crowded with people reading the exhibit panels, viewing the sculpture of the concurrent exhibit, and meeting sculptor Constantine Seferlis.

Preserving Memory is showing concurrently with Creating Memory, Preserving Memory: A selection of works from sculptor Constantine Seferlis. Seferlis, one of a handful of master stone carvers left in the United States, came from his native Greece to the Washington area in the late 1950s. He has carved sculptures at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and over 200 gargoyles, grotesques, keystones, and freestanding figures at the National Cathedral. Since leaving the cathedral in 1978, Seferlis has restored some of this country’s most prestigious monuments and buildings for the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, and Hillwood Museum.

Preserving Memory's stay in D.C. will conclude with Sculpture Day at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum on Saturday, March 13, 2004, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m. Activities will include a Walking Sculpture Tour, the program Learning about Sculptors through Archives and Interviews, and a Create Your Own Monument session for kids and grown-ups.

To date, 50 hosts in 34 states have registered to show Preserving Memory through 2004. A sculpture park and high school have been added to the varied list of venues, which includes cemeteries, retail malls, universities, museums, historical societies, historic houses, and historic main streets, town halls, and state capitols.

Each venue is sponsoring a humanities-based public program. For example:

• The West Chicago City Museum, Illinois, hosted a city sculpture lecture by Illinois Humanities "Roads Scholars" speakers bureau and a slide talk about cemetery symbolism by the director of a local museum.
• The Peacedale Library in Rhode Island sponsored a talk by a Daniel French scholar and a families' program with the same scholar and a conservator.
• The Oshkosh Public Library, Wisconsin, sponsored a reception and slide talk about conservation of Oshkosh monuments and a lecture about commemoration of significant events by the author of Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory.

For more information, visit the exhibit home page.