Candidate designs for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Quarter
In the fall of 2011, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and the Commission of Fine Arts reviewed candidate designs for the 2013 Mount Rushmore National Memorial Quarter. Design proposals SD-02 and SD-03 featured the sculpture under construction with wooden staging and with workmen in bosun chairs suspended from steel cables. Candidate design SD-01 offered an aerial view of the completed sculpture, while proposal SD-04 depicted the scale model of the sculptor’s original intended design now on display in the Sculptor’s Studio on the memorial grounds.
The reviewing organizations expressed great interest in representations of the sculpture’s construction, as the project took many years of perilous work on granite cliffs hundreds of feet above the valley floor. The Mount Rushmore sculpture had been an extraordinary engineering feat, requiring hundreds of workers on staging and in harnesses using dynamite, jackhammers, pneumatic drills, stone chisels and other tools.
After careful consideration, the Commission of Fine Arts recommended proposal SD-03 as the “strongest design” – representing construction of the mountain sculpture without being too busy or complex.
