1927, GUTZON BORGLUM SCULPTS MOUNT RUSHMORE

Today, The Grandma has been reading about John Gutzon, the American sculptor, who began sculpting Mount Rushmore, on a day like today in 1927.

 

John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum (March 25, 1867-March 6, 1941) was an American sculptor best known for his work on Mount Rushmore. 

 

He is also associated with various other public works of art across the U.S., including Stone Mountain in Georgia, statues of Union General Philip Sheridan in Washington D.C. and in Chicago, as well as a bust of Abraham Lincoln exhibited in the White House by Theodore Roosevelt and now held in the United States Capitol crypt in Washington, D.C.

The son of Danish immigrants, John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was born in 1867 in St. Charles, in what was then thought to be in Utah but was later determined to be in Idaho Territory.

His Mount Rushmore project, 1927-1941, was the brainchild of South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson. His first attempt with the face of Thomas Jefferson had to be redone when it was determined that there was not enough stone to complete it. Dynamite was used to remove large areas of rock from under Washington's brow. The initial pair of presidents, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, was soon joined by Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, in Lakota Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe or Six Grandfathers, in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. 

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the sculpture, called Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum.

The sculpture features 18 m heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation's birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively.

Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 5.17 km2. The mountain's elevation is 1,745 m above sea level.

The sculptor chose Mount Rushmore in part because it faces southeast for maximum sun exposure. The carving was the idea of Doane Robinson, a historian for the state of South Dakota. Robinson originally wanted the sculpture to feature American West heroes, such as Lewis and Clark, their expedition guide Sacagawea, Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse. Borglum chose the four presidents instead.

Peter Norbeck, U.S. senator from South Dakota, sponsored the project and secured federal funding.  

Construction began in 1927 and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939.

After Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist, but lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941, and only Washington's sculpture includes any detail below chin level.

The sculpture at Mount Rushmore is built on land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s. The Sioux continue to demand return of the land, and in 1980 the US Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians that the taking of the Black Hills required just compensation, and awarded the tribe $102 million. The Sioux have refused the money, and demand the return of the land. This conflict continues, leading some critics of the monument to refer to it as a Shrine of Hypocrisy.

More information: National Park Service

Sculpture is an art of the open air.
Daylight, sunlight, is necessary to it, and for me,
its best setting and complement is nature.

Henry Moore

1908, GRAND CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT IS CREATED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Grand Canyon, a beautiful place in Arizona that was declarated National Monument on a day like today in 1908.

Grand Canyon National Park, located in northwestern Arizona, is the 15th site in the United States to have been named as a national park.

The park's central feature is the Grand Canyon, a gorge of the Colorado River, which is often considered one of the Wonders of the World.

The park, which covers 4,926.08 km2 of unincorporated area in Coconino and Mohave counties, received more than six million recreational visitors in 2017, which is the second highest count of all American national parks after Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Grand Canyon was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. The park celebrated its 100th anniversary on February 26, 2019.

The Grand Canyon became well known to Americans in the 1880s after railroads were built and pioneers developed infrastructure and early tourism.

The first bill to establish Grand Canyon National Park was introduced in 1882 by then-Senator Benjamin Harrison, which would have established Grand Canyon as the third national park in the United States, after Yellowstone and Mackinac. Harrison unsuccessfully reintroduced his bill in 1883 and 1886; after his election to the presidency, he established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893.

Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation on 28 November 1906, and the Grand Canyon National Monument on January 11, 1908. Further Senate bills to establish the site as a national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911, before the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.

The National Park Service, established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.

The creation of the park was an early success of the conservation movement. Its national park status may have helped thwart proposals to dam the Colorado River within its boundaries. Later, the Glen Canyon Dam would be built upriver. A second Grand Canyon National Monument to the west was proclaimed in 1932.

More information: National Park Service

In 1975, that monument and Marble Canyon National Monument, which was established in 1969 and followed the Colorado River northeast from the Grand Canyon to Lees Ferry, were made part of Grand Canyon National Park.

In 1979, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site. The 1987 the National Parks Overflights Act found that Noise associated with aircraft overflights at the Grand Canyon National Park is causing a significant adverse effect on the natural quiet and experience of the park and current aircraft operations at the Grand Canyon National Park have raised serious concerns regarding public safety, including concerns regarding the safety of park users.

In 2010, Grand Canyon National Park was honored with its own coin under the America the Beautiful Quarters program.

On February 26, 2019, the Grand Canyon National Park commemorated 100 years since its designation as a national park.

The Grand Canyon, including its extensive system of tributary canyons, is valued for its combination of size, depth, and exposed layers of colorful rocks dating back to Precambrian times. The canyon itself was created by the incision of the Colorado River and its tributaries after the Colorado Plateau was uplifted, causing the Colorado River system to develop along its present path.

The primary public areas of the park are the South and North Rims, and adjacent areas of the canyon itself. The rest of the park is extremely rugged and remote, although many places are accessible by pack trail and backcountry roads. The South Rim is more accessible than the North Rim and accounts for 90% of park visitation.

The park headquarters are at Grand Canyon Village, not far from the South Entrance to the park, near one of the most popular viewpoints.

More information: Grand Canyon Trust

 The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be
adequately represented in symbols of speech,
nor by speech itself.
The resources of the graphic art are taxed
beyond their powers in attempting
to portray its features.
Language and illustration combined must fail.

John Wesley Powell

PAU CASALS: FROM EL VENDRELL TO THE UNITED NATIONS

Pau Casals i Defilló

Pau Casals i Defilló (December 29, 1876-October 22, 1973) was a cellist and conductor from El Vendrell, El Baix Penedès in Catalonia. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time. 

He made many recordings throughout his career, of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, also as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings of the Bach Cello Suites he made from 1936 to 1939.

His father, Carles Casals i Ribes (1852–1908), was a parish organist and choirmaster. He gave Casals instruction in piano, song, violin, and organ. He was also a very strict disciplinarian. When Casals was young his father would pull the piano out from the wall and have him and his brother, Artur, stand behind it and name the notes and the scales that his father was playing.

More information: Fundació Pau Casals / Pau Casals Foundation

In 1899, Casals played at The Crystal Palace in London, and later for Queen Victoria at Osborne House, her summer residence, accompanied by Ernest Walker. On November 12, and December 17, 1899, he appeared as a soloist at Lamoureux Concerts in Paris, to great public and critical acclaim.

Pau Casals with John Fitzerald and Jackie Kennedy

On January 15, 1904, Casals was invited to play at the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt. On March 9, of that year he made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, playing Richard Strauss's Don Quixote under the baton of the composer.

Casals was an ardent supporter of the Republican government, and after its defeat vowed not to return to Spain until democracy was restored. Casals performed at the Gran Teatre del Liceu on October 19, 1938, possibly his last performance in Catalonia during his exile.

In the last weeks of 1936, he already settled in the French Catalan village of Prada de Conflent, near the Spanish Catalan border; between 1939 and 1942 he made sporadic appearances as a cellist in the unoccupied zone of southern France and in Switzerland.

More information: Els sons de Pau Casals / Pau Casals' sounds

Pau Casals in the UNO, 1971

So fierce was his opposition to the dictatorial regime of Franco in Spain that he refused to appear in countries that recognized the authoritarian Spanish government. 

He made a notable exception when he took part in a concert of chamber music in the White House on November 13, 1961, at the invitation of President John F. Kennedy, whom he admired. On December 6, 1963, Casals was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

One of his last compositions was the Hymn of the United Nations. He conducted its first performance in a special concert at the United Nations on October 24, 1971, two months before his 95th birthday. On that day, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant, awarded Pau Casals the U.N. Peace Medal in recognition of his stance for peace, justice and freedom. Casals accepted the medal and made his famous I Am a Catalan speech, where he stated that Catalonia had the first democratic parliament, long before England did.

More information: El cant dels ocells / The song of the birds

Casals died in 1973 at Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at the age of 96, from complications of a heart attack he had three weeks earlier. He was buried at the Puerto Rico National Cemetery. He did not live to see the end of the Franco dictatorial regime, which occurred two years later.

In 1979 his remains were interred in his hometown of El Vendrell, Catalonia. In 1989, Casals was posthumously awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Al veure despuntar

el major lluminar

en la nit més ditxosa,
els ocellets cantant,

a festejar-lo van

amb sa veu melindrosa.

In seeing emerge

the greatest light

during the most celebrated of nights,
the little birds sing,

they go to celebrate Him

with their delicate voices.

El Cant dels Ocells / The Song of the Birds, Pau Casals