Those who want to cancel the classics are leaving us with an impoverished sense of ourselves and our forebears.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
O
n July 14, 1832, the United States Congress commissioned a marble statue of George Washington to be sculpted in celebration of the centennial of his birth. The sculptor Horatio Greenough completed the work in 1840, and his Enthroned Washington is still on display today at the National Museum of American History.
From a strict historical perspective, the sculpture is something of an anachronism. The bare-chested Washington…