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IWO JIMA SCULPTURE, MODEL FOR MARINE WAR MEMORIAL,

IS LOSING ITS HOME ON FLOATING MUSEUM -- "...Something

that large is going to need special care. Not many

museums could afford that sort of care."

 

 

For more information on the Intrepid museum, use the VA Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch
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Story here... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/
08/01/nyregion/01iwojima.html?_r=
1&ref=nyregion&oref=slogin

Story below:

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Iwo Jima Sculpture, Model for Marine War Memorial, Is Losing Its Home on Floating Museum

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

A 62-year-old sculpture of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima is getting the heave-ho from the museum on the aircraft carrier Intrepid while the ship is docked in Staten Island for an overhaul, museum officials and the sculpture’s owner said yesterday.

The five-ton sculpture, which served as a model for the United States Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va., has been on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum since 1995. But museum officials, who are starting to renovate the ship’s interior, said they declined to buy the sculpture from its owner, Rodney Hilton Brown, and asked him to remove it from the ship by September.

Mr. Brown, a Manhattan mortgage banker who acquired the sculpture from its creator, Felix de Weldon, is now searching for another museum that will make space for the piece, which is 16 feet long and, with its flag, 20 feet high.

The sculpture commemorates the planting of the American flag on Mount Suribachi in February 1945, during one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. The moment was captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph and has since become the iconic image of the Marines of that era.

The sculpture on the Intrepid, which is made of cement and plaster over a steel skeleton, was used in the 1940s to promote the sale of war bonds by the Treasury Department. Another, which Mr. de Weldon carved out of limestone, sits at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va. After making those two pieces, Mr. de Weldon, an Austrian-born sculptor, oversaw production of the 100-ton Marine Corps War Memorial, which was cast in bronze in Brooklyn, then installed in Arlington in 1954.

Mr. Brown said he obtained his sculpture from Mr. de Weldon in exchange for a violin that Mr. de Weldon believed to be a Stradivarius, as well as a sword and an undisclosed amount of cash. He then had it restored and coated with a bronze-tinged finish.

“Everybody thought I was crazy to restore this monster,” Mr. Brown said.

On the 50th anniversary of the flag-raising, the restored sculpture went on display on the hangar deck of the Intrepid, an Essex-class carrier that was commissioned in 1943 and became a maritime museum on the West Side of Manhattan in 1982. Over the years, the museum has broadened its theme to all branches of the military and beyond. Its collection has included Army helicopters, fighter jets built in the Soviet Union and Italy, even a Concorde supersonic passenger plane.

When the Intrepid had to move from its longtime mooring last year so that its pier could be rebuilt, museum officials began pruning the exhibits. Some aircraft were returned to the Army and Navy, and a booster engine from a Saturn rocket went back to the National Air and Space Museum, said Bill White, president of the foundation that runs the Intrepid museum.

Mr. White said that the foundation had raised $8 million to renovate the ship’s interior before it returns to Pier 86 on the West Side in the fall of 2008. Within that budget, he said, the foundation could not afford to buy Mr. Brown’s sculpture, Mr. White said. He declined to say how much Mr. Brown had asked for it.

“I believe that there is one Iwo Jima monument, and that is in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. White added, referring to the Marine Corps War Memorial.

Mr. White said the foundation was trying to acquire a fitting replacement for the sculpture to represent the contribution and sacrifice of the Marines.

That task may be less daunting than Mr. Brown’s quest for a new home for his sculpture. He has already appealed to the National Museum of the Marine Corps, which opened in November in Triangle, Va.

Although that museum has a Sherman tank on display and an exhibit devoted to the American assault on Iwo Jima, Lin Ezell, the museum’s director, said that Mr. Brown’s sculpture “wouldn’t fit” into its program.

“It falls into an anomalous category, because it’s not the final work and something that large is going to need special care,” Ms. Ezell said. “Not many museums could afford it that sort of care.”

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Larry Scott  --