A £1m art facility in Washington, DC, once marked for demolition, will instead be moved, thanks to a new agreement reached between the National Geographic Society and American University.
National Geographic executives declined to be interviewed but released a statement saying they were “happy” with the plan to move Eileen Zimmerman’s famous Marabar rock and water facility from its grounds to the university’s campus. The agreement ends a disaster that began nearly three years ago, when the community told Zimmerman it no longer wanted her sculptural work erected in 1984.
“It is a piece that is part of the history of landscape architecture,” said Jack Rasmussen, director of the American University Museum, which will now be tasked with protecting the Marabar. “A sculptor in the ’70s and ’80s was doing this? She’s a pioneer.”
Society’s board members applauded when plans for “Marabar” were revealed, according to David Childs, the architect who chose Zimmerman to construct the installation, a few blocks north of the White House. Zimmermann, 76, named her work, a set of granite boulders around a pool of water, after the fictional caves in E.M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India.
But in 2019, National Geographic, which is now mostly owned by The Walt Disney Company, embarked on plans to build a new entrance pavilion and a rentable roof garden. The assembly decided that “Marabar” was on its way.
Because part of its land is in a historic district, the plan was subject to the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board. After the review board gave the project “conceptual approval” in 2019, Zimmermann assumed her core technical work was doomed. “I wouldn’t have encountered Disney,” she said.
But advocates at the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit, have made Marabar a prestigious cause. More than two dozen architects, art critics and museum leaders have sent letters to the review board urging members to save Marabar.
Over the objections of a National Geographic-appointed attorney, the review board ordered the assembly back for another hearing, saying it had failed to provide enough information about Marabar when it presented its schemes. In March, National Geographic publicly pledged to salvage Zimmermann’s artwork, not by redesigning its expansion but by paying to move the granite blocks, each weighing 250,000 pounds.
American University, the new home announced this week, is just four miles away. The site is currently a grassy oval framed by crape myrtle and park benches, across the street from the university’s Katzen Arts Center. The granite blocks of “Marabar” will be visible from Massachusetts Avenue, just north of Ward Circle, one of the most well-run roundabouts in the area.
“I’m glad she’s still in Washington,” Zimmerman said, adding that she had planned a new stone and pool configuration. Instead of a long rectangular nozzle stream, the fountain will be crescent-shaped. It is not yet clear if it will be dried for the winter, as it is for the lock-like fountain at TriBeCa Capsouto Park.
In a statement, the president of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, Charles A. Birnbaum, said that “while we are disappointed that Marabar will not remain in place, we applaud the community for working with Ms. Zimmermann on this decision.”
For Zimmermann, Marabar’s success has led to the creation of public art commissions around the world, including a memorial to the bombing of the First World Trade Center and an installation commemorating the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But one of her much-welcomed works was recently demolished in San Francisco, It remains concerned about the fate of public artworks.
However, Rasmussen said he hopes the Marabar saga will become a “teachable moment,” beginning with an interdisciplinary exhibition at the Katzen Art Center that traces its construction and transmission.
Excavations for Marabar began earlier this month, aiming to install work at American University in the summer of 2022. At that point, Zimmermann also plans to announce a new name for the artwork. “It won’t be ‘Marabar,’ and more,” she said. “It’s going to be something new.”