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Lot 15
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Borglum Discusses Challenges of Creating the Mount Rushmore National Memorial
Borglum Discusses Challenges of Creating the Mount Rushmore National Memorial
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Description:

Borglum Gutzon

In this intriguing and important letter, famed sculptor Gutzon Borglum vents his frustrations to Treasury Department attorney John Harlan about difficulties with appropriations for the Mount Rushmore Memorial, but appreciates the efforts of Harlan and Herman Oliphant (1884-1939), who served as the Treasury Department’s General Counsel from 1934 to 1939.

 

When he learned of the resignation of a member of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission, Borglum immediately recommended to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in November 1935 that either Oliphant or Edward Bruce (1879-1943), chief of the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts from 1932 to 1942, would be suitable replacements. Roosevelt appointed Bruce.

 

GUTZON BORGLUM, Typed Letter Signed, to John Harlan, February 21, 1936, San Antonio, Texas. 1 p., 7.25" x 10.375." On “Gutzon Borglum” stationery. Holes punched in sides and top.

 

Excerpts:

“I’m afraid I’m getting mad about this damn thing, about which if you say anything to Herman, don’t let him think for one moment I’m not going through. I’m going through if I have to carry a club with me. But I’m getting terribly fed up with this man Boland and they have got six no-account, five new, republicans in South Dakota on this commission, and only two of them ever sit, and only one of them ever does any thinking, and his thinking is initiated by his pocket book and political affiliations – and that’s that!”

 

“I didn’t lose three hours to get a message to the White House urging the appointment of Herman or Bruce. Herman will remember. Well, we got Bruce. And he’s our friend, much more important, he’s a friend of the work and he’s the President’s friend, and he’s Herman’s friend, and on top of that he knows something about art and loves it.”

 

In 1923, South Dakota historian Doane Robinson conceived the idea of giant carvings in the Black Hills to promote tourism in South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum chose Mount Rushmore because it had the exposed granite to support sculpting and faced southeast with maximum exposure to the sun. The project received Congressional approval in March 1925 and began in October 1927. Initial estimates were that the project would take five years and cost $500,000.

 

Over the next fourteen years, Borglum and four hundred workers completed the carvings by blasting and drilling away 450,000 short tons of rock from the mountainside, with no fatalities. The total cost was just under $1 million. In 1933, the National Park Service assumed jurisdiction of Mount Rushmore.

 

Washington’s face was dedicated on July 4, 1930, followed by that of Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937, and Roosevelt in 1939. Because of Borglum’s complaints, the personnel of the first Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission were replaced with a second, effectively giving Borglum complete control in 1938. However, in 1939, authority returned to the federal government under the National Park Service.

 

After Gutzon Borglum’s death in March 1941, his son and assistant sculptor Lincoln Borglum continued the work until October 1941. Originally planned to include carvings from head to waist, the project ended due to insufficient funding, and the Mount Rushmore National Memorial was declared complete.

 

Borglum had moved his family to San Antonio, Texas, in 1925 to begin work on a large-scale monument for the Trail Drivers Association. While in Texas, Borglum and his family stayed at the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, and he continued to work from his studio there when not at Mount Rushmore.

 

 

Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) was born in Idaho territory to Mormon Danish immigrants. He studied art in California, where he met his first wife, artist Elizabeth Janes Putnam (1848-1922), whom he married in 1889 and divorced in 1908. They spent much of the next ten years traveling and exhibiting their works in Europe. In 1909, Borglum married Mary Montgomery Williams (1874-1955), and they had three children. Borglum soon became known for public sculptures on American nationalistic themes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased one of his sculptures in 1906, the first it had ever acquired by a living American. Among his other major works are a head of Abraham Lincoln from a block of marble, a mounted statue of Civil War General Philip Sheridan in Washington, D.C., the North Carolina monument at Gettysburg, and many others. A member of the Ku Klux Klan, Borglum was the original sculptor of the carving on Stone Mountain, Georgia, before clashes with the local committee led him to abandon the work. From 1927 to 1941, Borglum completed his most famous project, the 60-foot-high carvings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. For the latter half of the project, his son Lincoln Borglum served as his Assistant-Sculptor.

 

John G. Harlan (1891-1992) was born in Pennsylvania, and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and the George Washington University Law School. In 1916, he married Anna Marie Durning (1892-1927), and they had three children. From 1922 to 1926, he was special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General in Washington. Harlan served as Assistant U.S. District Attorney in El Paso from 1926 to 1928, when he resigned to practice law there. In 1929, he accepted a position in the income tax bureau of the Treasury Department. He co-authored the “Gold Clause” that removed the United States from the gold standard in 1933. By 1935, he was an Assistant to General Counsel Herman Oliphant of the Treasury Department. He also acted as an attorney for Gutzon Borglum, especially in Borglum’s negotiations with the Mount Rushmore National Memorial Commission.

 

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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