The Purpose To Save Great Art
MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL
Images of four United States Presidents were carved into a mountain called “Mount Rushmore” by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and almost 400 workmen who labored from 1927 through 1941.
Entombed here in southwestern South Dakota in the year 1998 are records of why and how this mountain was carved. Also included are important documents related to the history and growth of the United States of America in relation to these four presidents.
Borglum once wrote:
“We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore, we believe a nation’s memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests the gods they have become.
“As for sculptured mountains—Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced stuff: education, law, government, wealth—each is enduring only as the day. Too little of it lasts into tomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the enemy of today, as today has already begun to forget buried yesterday. Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor, and out of its body builds its homes, its temples. Civilizations are ghouls. Egypt was pulled apart by its successor; Greece was divided among the Romans; Rome was pulled to pieces by bigotry and bitterness much of which was engendered in its own empire building.
“I want, somewhere in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the likeness, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high it won’t pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.
“Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away.”
Written in 1930 by Borglum as a foreword for the first edition of a booklet on the memorial.