Proposed spending legislation by President Trump and the Republican administration awaits the last vote of the U.S. Senate today, which includes $40 million in “Stock Purchase for the American Hero Park.”
Page 820 of the “Large Bill” states that the $40 million funding for the statue of the National Humanities Foundation for fiscal year 2025 is “allocated to the National Humanities Foundation”, “from fiscal year 2028 to fiscal year 2028, Executive Order 13934, Executive Order 13978 and Executive Order 14189.
The National Sculpture Garden is one of the president’s core priorities for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year and was announced for the first time by executive order in Trump’s first semester in 2021.
The NEH’s April press release said that the National Hero Garden will feature a life-size statue of “the past 250 great people from America contribute to our cultural, scientific, economic and political heritage.” The press release said the garden was designed to “create a public space where Americans can learn and respect American heroes.” ”
Selected artists will receive a reward of up to $200,000 per statue and must be made of marble, granite, bronze, copper or brass.
The New York Times It was previously reported that President Trump “instructed the subject to be portrayed in a “realistic” way without allowing modernist or abstract design.”
Executive Order 13978 includes a list of 244 potential names including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Graham Bell, Pastor Dr. Martin Luther King King, Saka Garvea and Wright brothers, as well as figures such as Kobe Bryant, Julia Child, Julia Child, Alex Trebek and Hannah Arendt.
Photographer Ansel Adams, painter John Singer Sargent, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, early American portraitist Charles Wilson Peale and Andrew Carnegie, founder of the Carnegie Museum of Art, are also on the list.
The legislation will add $330,000 to losses due to its tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans, a sharp cut in Medicaid and seizures, an increase in $45 billion in funding for immigration and customs enforcement, changes in clean energy tax credits, changes to internal tax services, and other policy changes, which will add $330,000 to the decade-long budget.
As reported previously Artnewsthe planned sculpture garden will be funded by a federal grant originally allocated to art and cultural groups across the United States, but was cancelled by the Trump administration. These include the NEH scholarship and the faculty award, worth $60,000.
It is also worth noting that in fiscal 2025, NEA’s total budget was $210 million and NEH’s budget was $200 million, according to Arts Action Fund, a nonprofit national arts advocacy group.
News about the statue’s $40 million funding first reported Memorandum of key points of conversation.
