The moment of the unveiling of a public monument marks the end of a process. The need for commemoration was felt, an artist engaged to express the idea, and the means found to bring the project to realization. Whatever the intended meaning, once in the public eye an installation acquires its own history. The interpretation of its symbolic expression evolves and the original intent of the monument becomes only one of its meanings. A significant early Virginia monument is Houdon’s mid-1780s marble Washington, with its allusions to the story of Cincinnatus. A long century of monuments referencing classical themes followed, epitomized by the sculptor Crawford’s giant 1850s female warrior with a bird-helmet and pom-pom trim, standing today atop the U.S. Capitol. The monuments that marked the Civil War turned to more of an American-rooted symbolism.
