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.
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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