The visages of presidents past were looking down upon Donald Trump as he made a fiery speech excoriating his political foes for waging what he called a “merciless campaign” against the traditional values, heroes, and culture that underpin American greatness.
It was 2020, and there, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore, the then-45thpresident vowed to commission a monument “to the giants of our past” that would “feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live.”
From there, the concept of the “National Garden of American Heroes” was born – a sculpture park of 250 life-size artworks that would pay homage to the likes of Kobe Bryant, Amelia Earhart, Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali, Christopher Columbus, and Sally Ride, among others, and would stand as new monuments in the American landscape.
Two election cycles, one ballot-box defeat, and a rescinded – and then reinstituted – executive order later, artists are finally sketching 3D models, various localities are vying to be the site for the sculpture garden, and Congress is looking at setting aside millions of taxpayer dollars for the project.
In his second term, Trump is pushing forward on plans for his great American sculpture garden.
But the project – a personal endeavor of the president’s now five years in the making– is facing an uncertain future amid serious questions about the timeline, cost, location, and reception within the art community, threatening to sacrifice the quality and delivery of the project meant to debut at the nation’s big 250th anniversary celebration in July of 2026.
“No one wants an outdoor Madame Tussauds museum and it appears that the administration is taking the right steps to make sure that we get beautiful, inspiring works of art,” Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, tells CNN.
Mount Rushmore took over a decade to complete, and was not without controversy, but stands now as a hugely recognizable American monument. Can Trump’s Garden of Heroes equal its renown?
To be sure, the requirements for the project are serious and ambitious.
In April, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency that acts as the nation’s largest funder of public humanities projects, began soliciting artist proposals for the garden.
According to its solicitation announcement, proposals had to be sculptures in the classical style, lifelike, and created from marble, granite, bronze, copper or brass. Statues should be 1.2 times the historical height of the individual, so standing figures should be between 6.5 feet and 8.5 feet tall.
Artists had until July 1stto submit their applications, which was to include two-dimensional or three-dimensional graphic representation of the preliminary concepts for up to three statues they would like to create, as well as the historical and scholarly sources that informed their design.
The NEH estimated it would take artists 60 hours to complete just these requirements.
Artists were also asked to disclose any outstanding debts, including student loans, taxes and child support payments they currently have. If chosen, they would need to provide evidence that they have entered into a repayment agreement, the NEH said.
Artists are required to be US citizens.
The winning designs and artists are to be announced by September, though it is unclear how the artists will be chosen – the NEH did not get back to CNN’s questions about the process for review and selection, nor to confirm if there is a selection committee.
“They are thumbing their nose at both standard processes and historical expertise,” said James Grossman, executive director emeritus of the American Historical Association, describing the process as abnormal, apparently without a clearly communicated plan and time for peer review.
Those commissioned have until June 2026 – just nine months to complete and deliver their work – on a budget of $200,000 per statue to cover the cost of materials, design, and transportation.
The timeline and the budget – very modest for artworks of this size and ambition – may have been enough to put off some serious artists.
It can take 10 years for a project like this to be done right, said Melissa Walker of Carolina Bronze Sculpture, a foundry. “People that are really serious about their art are just looking at this and saying that they don’t really want any part of it.”
“There’s so many variables that go into a project like this, and it just doesn’t seem like anybody has thought it – it’s just not a well thought-out plan,” she said, adding: “If you just wanna have somebody sculpt these digitally and 3D print them and send them to China and have them done on the cheap, yeah, you might be able to get it done in in less than a year.”
Paula Slater, a sculptor who has worked for 30 years in the industry, said that, on the other hand, it could spur lesser-known artists to apply.
“There aren’t 90 good portrait sculptors out there that have a body of work; I don’t know where they’re going to be getting all these sculptors,” she said.
Slater herself decided to submit to the project, applying for three figures: Native American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, author Herman Melville and actress Ingrid Bergman, who Slater has proposed to sculpt as Joan of Arc from her iconic movie role.
Normally, each sculpture would take over a year individually, she said. In anticipation of possibly being chosen, she’s already contacted sculptor friends who could help her in some of the preliminary work before she does the finishing work.
Slater is not a supporter of the president or the quick timeline but said she is not going to let that stop her from participating in what could become an important piece of history.
“I’m doing this in spite of the president being involved,” she said.
That the project is Trump’s vision has, perhaps unsurprisingly, given it controversy from the beginning.
Plans for the sculpture garden have had many fits and starts. From the moment Trump signed the executive order for its creation, eyebrows were raised over the list of names included – a grab-bag of historical and contemporary figures that run the gamut from Billie Holiday and Susan B. Anthony to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barry Goldwater, Billy Graham, Shirley Temple and Alex Trebek, among others.
“I don’t really take it all that seriously,” Ken Lum, a sculptor and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said. “It has a kind of carnival quality to it.”
Lum took issue with the Americans chosen to be immortalized in the statue, a list that has drawn controversy in the past.
“There’s a high degree of arbitrariness to it, which tells me that it’s not all that serious,” he said.
Then, there is the politics. Trump’s original order was revoked when he was voted out and President Joe Biden took office. It was reinstituted again when Trump returned to the White House in January, and this time, he vowed to fund the project with a $40 million allocation from the Department of the Interior for land and construction.
This week, that provision was included in the “big, beautiful bill” approved by the Republican-led Senate, and is likely to come to fruition when the legislation is reconciled through the House.
This comes as the president has called for unprecedented gutting of federal support for arts and humanities, pulling money from NEH grants, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and redirecting federal funding towards cultural initiatives he backs – like the National Garden of Heroes.
Aside from the $40 million in the budget bill, the NEH and NEA have jointly set aside $34 million to fund the art commissions.
“Donald Trump has a track record of vanity projects and there is a real concern that the resources that were stripped from NEH, ILMS and similar are being put toward his self-serving purposes,” a former NEH official, who has served in multiple administrations, told CNN.
Beyond the timeline and the politics, the practicalities can weigh on artists.
Sculpting lasting art of the size and scope being commissioned is expensive business.
“The artist would have to go basically $100,000 into debt before they even get paid by the federal government,” said Micah Springut, CEO and Founder of Monumental labs, a foundry in New York that produces marble sculptures.
According to Springut, it costs as much as $25,000 to buy the quantity of marble needed for life-size sculptures, and shipping and installation could be some $20,000. There are enormous labor and facilities costs.
“You have to have a huge risk tolerance or you have to be wealthy or ignorant or idealistic to even get into this,” he said.
Bronze is slightly cheaper, but foundry space for bronze works can fill up a year in advance, experts say, making it hard for artists to get on the books.
Moreover, detailed planning is required to properly devise sculptural designs. “You can’t just plop sculpture down in the middle of a field. You have to have engineering done for the type of land that is going to be sitting on and the climate is going to be in,” said Walker, the project manager at Carolina Bronze Sculpture.
How will people interact with the statues? Will children be dangling off arms or climbing onto pedestals? Artists need this kind of information at the start to fully realize their work, she said.
Yet a chance to be a part of history can be enough of an enticement.
“I see this as an opportunity to give back to our country to have an opportunity to have some great artwork in place by some of the greatest artists in America,” said Matt Glenn, an artist in Provo, Utah who specializes in bronze statues. “Presidents will come and go. History has been written and for us to be able to be a part of that and preserve that history and have that for generations to come.”
Glenn has applied to sculpt Whitney Houston, Steve Jobs, and Chief Red Cloud, with a full war bonnet in his traditional clothing.
He plans to carve the music star singing with her arms up to capture the essence of her motion, while the Apple founder is in a more stoic pose in his signature turtleneck. He and his team of ten artists are prepared to clear their plates and “put in the long days to make sure everything is done” should they be chosen, Glenn said.
Artist John Belardo, based in New York, has applied to create two sculptures: architect Cass Gilbert, who designed the Woolworth Building, and Herman Melville, which he intends to carve from white marble to connect to the idea of Moby Dick as the white whale.
“In 20, 50 years nobody will even remember that it was Trump who did it and it’s beyond beside the point,” Belardo said. “It’s more than just your lifetime; it’s kind of this bigger idea – it could be there for thousands of years.”
If he is chosen, Belardo plans to make his sculptures at Monumental Labs, the New York foundry run by Springut, who has said he will front up to $100,000 to help artists who are selected with start-up costs that can be paid back when they get their government checks.
The foundry uses robotic fabrication in its workshop to cut the stone to scale, reducing the time it takes to complete a sculpture.
“We have seven robots, we have 20 carvers who could work on this,” Springut said. “We could do the whole thing in a few years. On that shortened timeframe, we’re just lucky to get a couple dozen out.”
Amid a deluge of concerns, CNN has learned that Trump’s plans are now being reworked.
A source with knowledge of the project tells CNN that the Trump administration is now coming to terms that they will not be able to achieve their goal for all 250 statutes to be completed in a year. The new, informal goal is to try to get 25 to 50 statues completed by July 2026 so that the garden can open on time, with a smaller collection of statues that would serve as an early teaser of what the garden could become.
The intention would be to add the rest of the statues in subsequent years as they are completed.
This recalibration of Trump’s original goal is a tacit admission by the administration, this source says, that the project was risking being a collection of rushed, mediocre art.
The statues, whenever they are made, will likely end up in South Dakota, very near the spot where Trump stood to announce his vision in the first place.
South Dakota has been pushing hard to bring the sculpture garden to their state.
Governor Larry Rhoden and members of Congress have been on calls with the White House monthly, sources tell CNN, to lobby for the project to be brought to the Black Hills, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore.
The governor has already identified the land for the proposed site – a 40-acre area of land in sight of Mount Rushmore. The Chuck Lien family, a four-generation South Dakota family, has offered to donate their strip of land.
The mockups of the proposal, provided to CNN, show seven distinct areas of the garden, with seven groupings for the statues: “The Presidents,” “The Founders,” “The Brave,” “The Servants,” “The Visionaries,” “The Storytellers,” and “The Reformers” among landscapes of water, greenery and small footpath bridges.
There is confidence in the inner circles of South Dakota government that Trump understands that vision and they are hopeful for a decision soon. Philadelphia and the National Mall are also being considered, but neither seems to have as detailed plans for the garden as South Dakota.
Comparable mock-ups could not be found for other cities mentioned as possible sites. The National Park Service, the mayor’s office in DC and the governor’s office in Pennsylvania did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.
“I’m incredibly optimistic that this is the right place for the Garden of Heroes and every conversation I have with the administration they let me know that they understand the benefits of this location,” Congressman Dusty Johnson of South Dakota told CNN. “The White House has a bias for action they understand the importance of making material progress before we get to America’s 250th birthday.”
“The Black Hills mark the perfect location to achieve your vision for the National Garden of American Heroes,” Governor Rhoden said in a letter to President Trump in March. “Together, we will make this project happen in a way that honors America’s heroes, takes advantage of South Dakota’s natural beauty, and incorporates the most iconic monument to our greatest leaders: Mount Rushmore National Memorial.”
Riane Lumer contributed to this report.