OLYMPIA — The decade-old World War II memorial on the Capitol Campus is one of the most personal works of Olympia artist Simon Kogan.
Kogan, a Russian immigrant of Jewish descent who lost relatives during the war, has received thank-you notes from veterans moved by the memorial. As he explains it, these veterans entrusted him to encapsulate the toil and sacrifice of their war experience for future generations.
Kogan, 50, said it’s this allegiance that drives his nearly 2-year-old dispute with the state Department of General Administration, which maintains all the memorials on the Capitol Campus.
He says that overaggressive cleaning in May 2007 damaged the memorial and robbed it of its most powerful feature. He has demanded that the state agency fix the damage or he will sue.
“I’m ashamed,” he said. “They paid me to do that. To me, it’s a personal responsibility which I’m not keeping up with.”
General Administration said the memorial is not damaged and it hired a third party to ensure it was cleaned following standards defined by state law.
“It may not have cleaned it in the same way he would have done it, but, again, we had peer review say the memorial is in good to very good condition,” said Steve Valandra, an agency spokesman.
The dispute raises questions about the obligation of a state government with finite resources to uphold the artistic vision of a public memorial.
The memorial was dedicated on May 28, 1999 the Friday before Memorial Day and cost $720,000. Kogan, whose work includes the Motherhood sculpture on Percival Landing, was selected from among 42 entrants to design it.
The main feature is a cluster of five, 14-foot-tall blades that contain the names of the nearly 6,000 state residents who died in the war. Nearby, a field of 4,000 wheat stalks made of bronze referencing the first stanza of “America the Beautiful” symbolize this collective loss. Tiles engraved with the names of those who donated to the memorial are embedded in the ground and border the memorial.
John Lee, director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs, said his agency has received numerous expressions of concern about the degradation of the donor tiles. Many of the tiles are illegible, a condition that Valandra attributes to a combination of factors, including cleaning and the elements. Lee said the tiles would be replaced with a more durable material with money set aside by the Legislature for repair of memorials on the campus.
One of the donors who voiced concern is Mike Petrie, a captain with the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office. He purchased a tile in honor of his father, Harold, a retired Army major who served in World War II. Harold Petrie died in 1999.
Petrie said he had heard about the condition of the tile but was taken aback by the degradation in the year since he last saw it. He said it took him about eight minutes to locate the tile Wednesday.
“The lack of care for a war memorial, I don’t care for what war it is, really kind of soured me,” he said. “It was very disheartening.”
He added: “If we’re going to take care of something on that campus, let’s have it be the war memorials. That kind of an important thing for people to realize and to go visit.”
The tiles are of secondary concern to Kogan compared with another element of the memorial.
In 2002, General Administration crews cleaned the memorial with instructions from Kogan. Five years later, the agency hired a conservation technician to assist the crews. This work included powerwashing. Valandra said the agency did not consult the artist “because we felt we would get appropriate work done by the conservation technician.”
Kogan maintains this is a breach of the contract commissioning the memorial, which states: “Where possible, the Artist shall be consulted as to his/her recommendations regarding repairs and restorations being made during the lifetime of the Artist.” Valandra said the state is not required to use Kogan.
Kogan maintains the powerwashing damaged the blades, wheat field and tiles. He said the cleaning destroyed the patina that gave color, form and contrast to the “ghosts” that framed the etched names on the blades. Kogan used chemicals to create this effect as an “invitation from faraway” for passers-by. He explained approaching visitors would then see and touch the names, establishing a connection between the living and war dead.
Lee said he hadn’t heard any complaints about the loss of the patina.
Last year, state lawmakers approved $288,000 to repair campus memorials, including $188,000 to repair the donor tiles, wheat stalks and blades.
General Administration proposes spending $10,000 to replace the protective wax on the blades, a project that Kogan contends will only serve to preserve the damage.
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