Art About Love of Country Rules the Headlines

At least at NR it does: A reborn triumphal arch in Brooklyn, America 250 in Venice, bias at the Smithsonian, and a sublime Canaletto on the auction block

T oday I’m launching July 4 a few days early with tidbits about celebrations of America through art. Earlier this month, Brooklyn’s splendid Soldiers and Sailors Arch on Grand Army Plaza reopened after a two-year $8.9 million renovation sponsored by New York City’s Parks Department and the Prospect Park Alliance. The triumphal arch, echoing those in the Roman Forum, is on Grand Army Plaza by the entrance to Prospect Park. Completed in 1892, and crumbling for years, it’s Brooklyn’s memorial to Union soldiers and sailors who fought during the Civil War. It looks fantastic.

John Duncan, the architect for Grant’s Tomb in Manhattan, designed the monument, but the plaza comes from Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. It serves as a buffer between a confluence of busy streets and serene Prospect Park. Brooklyn was still its own city when the arch opened, and what a dynamo it was. It wanted and got the best. Frederick MacMonnies, who followed his mentor Saint Gaudens as America’s premier sculptor, designed three bronze groups, one each symbolizing the Army and the Navy and, on top of the arch, a four-horse chariot in which Columbia, America’s personification, rides in triumph.

The Navy group includes a fat, buxom war goddess, a black sailor, and various old salts. The Army group is a riot of phallic swords, fallen horses, charging soldiers, and the war god Ares as choreographer. A coffered ceiling under the arch, composite columns, and medallions add more touches of elegant opulence.

Reliefs of Lincoln and Grant on horseback were done by Thomas Eakins, an accomplished sculptor as well as an inspired portraitist, and William O’Donovan, the go-to sculptor of George Washington figures. President Cleveland dedicated it in October 1892, coinciding with Brooklyn’s celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birthday of Christopher Columbus and his historic voyages. Civil War veterans marched through it in one of Brooklyn’s grandest parades.

Design-wise, Greek austerity went out the window. It’s Roman and Beaux-Arts abbondanza at its best. By our time, though, vandalism, a collapsing roof deck, decaying steps, defective drains, bad lighting, and a scuffed façade couldn’t be ignored. The renovation is beautifully done. Even the granite sparkles. Hundreds of thousands died during the Civil War to advance freedom and opportunity. I hope the arch’s renaissance stirs gratitude among even the densest and surliest among us.

Kudos to the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit group that works with the Parks Department to care for what’s called Brooklyn’s Backyard. It lends horticulturalists, preservation experts, and day-in-day-out volunteers to keep the park beautiful.

By the by, as I write, they’re still counting votes in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York. On the one hand, Andrew Cuomo sent many a meemaw and gramps to the Great Beyond during Covid. On the other hand, Zohran Mamdani dreams of a rent freeze, free subway rides, no cops, and an end to incarceration. He obviously hates Jews. He’s all for bringing the intifada to America, which includes New York. Young New Yorkers love him, especially the ones with college degrees! Talk about being educated beyond your intelligence. It looks like Mamdani won. What a revolting development, channeling the “life of Riley.” This choice between arsenic and blowing your brains out rehabilitates — a bit — Bill de Blasio, the city’s worst mayor ever, except for the moment he made restoring the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Arch a priority.

From Brooklyn to Venice but still on the subject of America at its best: The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs finally got its patootie in out-of-bed mode and posted a call for proposals for next year’s American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Biennale is the oldest and grandest contemporary art exposition in the world. Held every two years, it hosts dozens of countries’ picks of art, sometimes by a single artist, sometimes by theme. Last year, 88 countries sent exhibitions. We’ve been sending American art to the Biennale since it started in 1895.

Here in the U.S., the State Department starts our selection process by asking for proposals. Usually, museums submit ideas anchored by a curatorial vision. The National Endowment for the Arts then vets the proposals and picks one, and off to the races we go. The 2026 Biennale opens on May 9. The finish line, reached by truck, plane, moped, or Pony Express, but, ultimately, by boat, is the American pavilion in Venice’s elegant Giardini.

The State Department published its clarion call on April 30 for submissions due at the end of July. The selection will be made by September 1. “Proposals will be evaluated based on criteria such as advancement of U.S. foreign policy goals, artistic excellence, and promotion of American values,” the call states. And no DEI allowed, praise the Lord. The organizer of the American pavilion gets a $350,000 federal grant. Beyond that, it needs to demonstrate an ability to raise the rest. Last year’s American pavilion, an extravaganza starring the work of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, is said to have cost $5 million.

In Woke World, alas, criteria such as “the advancement of U.S. foreign policy goals, artistic excellence, and promotion of American values” spoil the fun. Tears threaten to flood Manhattan’s Morningside Heights, D.C.’s effete, elite suburbs, Santa Monica, and AOC’s Gaza-shaped swimming pool. What about atrocities like race? And oppression? And transphobia, fatphobia, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and ilithiophobia, the fear of useful idiots, Woke’s base? How to make art without one or all as topics? I know, it’s like canceling Indigenous People’s Day on Thanksgiving, Celebrate Hamas block parties on October 7, and March for Mao on December 26, Mao’s birthday.

Next year is the country’s 250th birthday. Let’s put negativity and navel-gazing on hold and do something that’s not only upbeat but illuminating. The second story I wrote for NR, in 2017, was about what’s American about American art. Let’s look at that topic. God forbid people learn something new. Or a group show, or art from all 50 states, hung Salon-style. Or an exhibition of work by Americans under 30, no nomophobics allowed. They’re afraid of being separated from their mobile phone or unable to use it. They’re losers.

Museum time is like celestial time, so we’re very late in planning for the Biennale. And all the NEA’s department heads have quit. Dealers move fast and are entrepreneurial, but we’re talking about a few months. The National Garden of American Heroes, championed by President Trump, due to open next year, can be postponed, but the American pavilion show can’t. In ye olden days, directors and curators worked fast, but registrars, unions, marketeers, and publications weren’t involved. And the Biennale is in Italy and run by Italians. I’m not worried about money. With the IMLS, the NEA, and the NEH gutted, there’s lots of spare cash to be spent.

More from the Swamp. I wrote earlier this month about Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, fired by President Trump for worshipping the DEI gods with a surfeit of zeal. Did Trump have the power to can her? The Smithsonian secretary, Lonnie Bunch, and its regents said no. Though the federal government owns its buildings and collections and pays most of the Smithsonian’s bills, they say it’s independent. “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps,” as Doris Day sang. I didn’t think Trump could — or should — reach that far down the bureaucratic food chain, however often I’ve said that Sajet was a flop for her lack of good curatorial vision.

The Smithsonian regents met earlier this month, crisis in the air. The board issued a statement after the meeting, gently noting that Bunch — and only Bunch — has the power to fire a Smithsonian Museum director. Sajet continued to come to work until June 12, days after the regents’ statement, when she quit for the sake of the museum and to dodge a brawl with Trump, a brawler both brutal and boffo.

My spies tell me she was pushed out by Bunch. The regents don’t want a fight with Trump, either, I’ve heard, though they’re committed to protecting Bunch by any means they have. Aside from issuing their statement on the chain of command, they instructed Bunch to assess and correct Smithsonian’s programs “to ensure unbiased content.”

Though I admire Bunch for his triumph in building the African American History and Culture Museum from scratch while he was director there, his unforgivable sin is in sponsoring the 1619 Project. He said when it was published that he wanted DEI to be at the center of the Smithsonian’s work. Next year, the terms of six regents end. “We’ve gotta protect Lonnie” seems to be a short-term proposition.

The Sajet squabble has, I hear, terrified Smithsonian staffers. “They’re coming for us,” an acquaintance told me of mythical MAGA types from Tuscaloosa, Amarillo, Pocatello, and other places she couldn’t find on a map. “Yes,” I said with my cryptic but all-knowing Mona Lisa smile. “They’ve got camps for people like you.” She gulped. “Only kidding,” I said. Left-wingers have no sense of humor. The top brass at the Smithsonian, though, are like the mullah dons at Harvard. They’re not only extreme. They’re entitled, hubristic, and intractable. They hope to wait Trump out.

On the brightest of notes, I’m looking at Christie’s Old Master evening sale on July 1 in London, where the loftiest, lordliest Canaletto still in private hands is to be sold. It’s Christie’s last big-bash sale for the summer. No, this isn’t Jeff Bezos’s wedding. It’s Venice, the Return of the Bucintoro on Ascension Day, from the early 1730s, on the block next week. It depicts Bucintoro, the doge’s official barge, on its one official appearance during the year, on the feast day of Jesus’s ascension to Heaven. Then, the doge, standing on the ship, tossed a gold ring in the water, symbolizing Venice’s divinely sanctioned marriage to the sea. I’ve never seen it but know it as Canaletto’s most impressive take on Venice’s grandest procession. At 33 by 54 inches, it’s cinematic.

Canaletto came from a family of scenic designers and stage painters, so it’s no surprise he’s at his best when it comes to theater. He lines up the procession’s elements on an oblique angle along Venice’s Molo so we can see all of Venice’s key landmarks as well as all the procession’s elements in their full splendor. Venice was, of course, a fully designed stage on which La Serenissima enacted its military, political, and mercantile might. Technically, too, the painting is splendid, with figures in the foreground built up in layers of paint for detail and three-dimensionality and, in the distance, figures done in calligraphic curls, loops, and dashes. The scene is pulsating with life yet airy and spacious.

The painting belonged to Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, who displayed it at 10 Downing Street. Venice scenes were much loved in Britain, in part for their evocation of imperial power, especially power at sea. The Brits saw themselves as Venice’s heir, so the picture is patriotic, Italian scene though it might be. No one knew that La Serenissima, a 1,000-year-old republic, would do a belly flop a few years later when Napoleon invaded it and ousted the old order.

The Canaletto stayed in Walpole’s family for nearly 200 years. It has changed hands a few times since the 1940s but is in pristine condition. Christie’s won’t publish an estimate, but it’ll go for tens of millions.