With the inauguration of United States President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. today, I wanted to share a history and gallery of 43 crumbling effigies of the presidents of the United States that stand in a field near Williamsburg, Virginia. The busts are all that remains of the defunct Presidents Park which was the brainchild of Houston sculptor David Adickes first envisioned opening a private park with busts of all of the president’s heads by the fall of 2000. Dwindling attendance and a lack of private funding for the park led to the closure of the Presidents Park prior to the completion of the bust for President Barack Obama.
Very sad that they aren’t being seeing. They could be randomly placed in a park and call it old presidents park and let nature take over.
Interesting pieces. Almost more interesting for the decay.
Years ago I worked at COSI, the gigantic albeit empty science museum in Columbus, Ohio. They’d had a display of primitively-animatronic US Presidents, all of whom were sculpted smaller than life but larger than ventriloquists’ dummies. I think they were supposed to speak and/or move, but by the time I had to clean them out of our warehouse they were just hanging limply on some sort of rack. I don’t know where they ultimately wound up, but I found myself waltzing around with Chester A Arthur trying to load him into a truck. Not spooky at all.
Seems like a lot of work to make that many busts