Now wrap your brain around this one, on this the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. The final renowned sculptor awarded the contract in the early 1960s to at last supervise the completion of the Stone Mountain Confederate carving, Capt. Walker Kirtland Hancock (U.S. First Army), was one of the decorated WWII Monuments Men in the then new Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Section. How truly impressive to learn that Hancock was among a group of around 345 men and women (full list here) charged with protecting, recovering, and then ultimately saving from destruction, so many of Europe’s great artworks and cultural treasures, which had been plundered by the Nazis (or forcibly sold to them) for Hitler’s planned Führermuseum in his birthplace, Linz, Austria. Even after the Normandy landings, so much of their mission remained to be completed, especially after Hitler issued the Nero Decree in March 1945, calling for destruction of all infrastructure within Reich territory. The clock was ticking to retrieve the paintings and sculptures from storage sites set to be bombed in the Altausee and Merkers salt mines and the largest repository at Neushwanstein Castle in Bavaria.
Inarguably, it's truly a gripping chapter in WWII history, especially to someone more easily reached through creative corollaries such as art history, literature, and poetry. At once I felt newly realized admiration and pride. Suddenly, I found myself reading Hancock’s suspenseful 1946 College Art Journal essay, “Experiences of a Monuments Officer in Germany” and borrowing the 2009 #1 bestselling book THE MONUMENTS MEN: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel (with co-author, Bret Witter, a resident of Decatur, GA). A few months ago I also watched George Clooney’s 2014 movie, “The Monuments Men” (John Goodman’s character is loosely based on Walker Hancock).
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Ever since, I’ve been left mulling so many questions, especially about why Walker Hancock, a man who had saved art from Hitler (as much as was possible anyways), would attach his good name to finishing a big Confederate monument that many in recent years have been eager to see removed — and at least rightfully re-contextualized. Is it a catch-22, removing a carving by a Monuments Man? That one of the Monuments Men became involved in the completion of the carving in the years after the State of Georgia essentially bought Stone Mountain from the Klan feels almost noble on the face of it, but then again, the original, well-documented white supremacist origins of this particular monument, dating back to 1914, are undeniable. So, looking back in time from here in 2019, of course it surprises me that someone that more or less fought against Nazis would involve himself in a project that for many is still so unshakably synonymous with white supremacy and has certainly not been regarded as a monument for all of "the people of Georgia." It's worth noting that in 1940 Hitler ordered destroyed a statue of Woodrow Wilson in Posen, Germany by Gutzon Borglum, the first sculptor commissioned to do the Stone Mountain carving, as retaliation for the artist's support of the British forces (Germany's defeat by Britain later helped finally end WWII). But, perhaps no less mind-boggling and ironic, is that the Allied Forces firebombed Dresden (Feb. 13-14, 1945), which was not deemed militarily significant, and pretty much destroyed that entire city, including its artworks. I don't pretend to understand wartime decisions; I'm simply someone born at a later time with questions, questions that I realize may not always have straightforward answers.
Walter Hancock's valorous experience as a Monuments Man is not a narrative often highlighted in connection with his time consulting on the ever controversial Confederate carving on Stone Mountain, though it seems quite a selling point. As lead consultant, Hancock visited Atlanta and Stone Mountain periodically and supervised a team of workers to at last complete the carving for "the people of Georgia," but his overall experience doesn't appear to have been easy or wholly satisfying. At the time, the fact that the carving remained unfinished for so long was actually felt by a political majority as an embarrassment to the state of Georgia, whereas in recent years, the subject matter celebrating a Lost Cause narrative at a place where a hate group like the Klan operated for so long has been more the rightful source of controversy, strife, and pain.
Notwithstanding in-fighting and competition among at least nine sculptors that sought the commission as early as 1961, matters seemed to grow more complicated as the memorial association's business operations were being investigated in 1964 (the Atlanta-Constitution ran a multi-part series by Pulitzer-winning reporter Jack Nelson called "Muddle at the Mountain" that actually led to a state probe and legislative investigation). Even before Hancock was awarded the job, from among a pool of contestants, a process overseen by Lamar Dodd, completing the carving was never without controversy. These Mar. 9, 1963 and Jan. 12, 1969 Atlanta-Constitution articles also offer typical examples of the tensions within the arts and environmental communities in the 1960s. George Weiblen, and then crew foreman and rigger, Roy Faulkner, along with longtime worker on the carving, Charlie Tucker, were on the ground locally in Stone Mountain and took direction from Hancock, following his design and models, and it bears acknowledging that their labor was supported over the years by county convicts residing in prison camps at Stone Mountain Park at the time (and in later years prisoners were held at the Stone Mountain Correctional Facility in nearby Stone Mountain Village, in Shermantown, until only a few years before the 1996 Olympics would come to Atlanta).
It's highly unlikely that Walker Hancock would not have been aware at the time he signed a contract with the Stone Mountain Memorial Association (first poised to sign in 1964 and finally signing in 1969) that the park, which was already in operation, would in essence have a grand reopening on April 14, 1965 (yes, on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's assassination) as a Confederate theme park during the Civil Rights Era—and that this park would be positioned as a prominent part of Georgia's tourism infrastructure during a highly charged time when Georgia was among those states most resistant to integration, and only a few months before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be passed. The message had to have been very clear about what the park and carving were to symbolize, and while the Second Era Klan may not have owned the mountain anymore, and were legally banned from gathering there, they were still violently active during this period and were very much so using the Confederate flag to intimidate people of color. The presence of such a theme park, then and now, no doubt helped further exacerbate racial tensions and position the carving as a beacon for white supremacists and home-grown extremists.
Naturally, I'm still left pondering what constitutes art, cultural treasure, or plain old propaganda. And then asking how accountable are sculptors or artists in general for artworks that are ideologically questionable at the time, or perhaps deemed so later when history judges? Or do we pass it off with accommodating excuses: “well, they only did it for the money,” "it was his job," or “that was what people did back then?” Or do we reach a place of acceptance that all of it, warts and all of the "products" of certain times, are part of the greater narrative, and in essence, our history. It's never a simple explanation, is it? And it sure makes me long for institutions to do a better job at telling a more comprehensive, inclusive story.
But it sincerely amazes me how, even though I grew up in Stone Mountain, that it's only been within the past few years that, on my own, I've become aware of Hancock's role in WWII, his contribution at Stone Mountain, or even learned of his other sculptures around the country, many federally commissioned. And I continue to learn of yet more acclaimed artists, such as Steffen Thomas and Julian Harris, among quite a few others, that vied for the final commission at Stone Mountain, and I plan to explore some of these artists, many not without their own criticisms and colorful pasts, in greater depth here soon. Stone Mountain Park's primary focus for so long has been on being a top state tourist attraction, priding itself on being a "family park," but time is showing how prioritizing entertainment and attractions often comes at the expense of sharing a wider spectrum of valuable history, and a richer interpretative experience, not just with Georgians, but with millions of visitors from around the world. People crave and deserve knowledge, even if the history of a place is complicated, and that kind of investment in education doesn't necessarily mean a decrease in state tourism dollars either.
Walter Hancock published a memoir, A Sculptor’s Fortunes, two years before he passed away in Gloucester, MA. And just two years ago, his daughter donated his papers to the Smithsonian, so maybe more insights and answers about his time as a proverbial Monuments Man in Stone Mountain exist yet. Read is an excerpt of Hancock's memoir that pertains to the carving on Stone Mountain (with special thanks to the Cape Ann Museum for their help).
WALKER HANCOCK: Yes. As I look back, I think that there are regrets that I haven’t been able to be more inventive and creative of new directions. Whether I would have been capable of taking advantage of perfect freedom at any time in my career is a question to me. The sort of thing that I really would have responded to, did respond to most, was a very large opportunity such as Stone Mountain was originally. I was really fired by that, and I think that something might have come out of it.
ROBERT BROWN: But there were all those unfortunate compromises that were beyond your control.
WALKER HANCOCK: Yes. They were beyond my control. I could control almost everything except politics.