Liberty Memorial has been on top of the hill across from Union Station standing stately, steadfast and gray for a century. Now, it’s about to get a whole lot more colorful.
On each of the next seven weekends, the tower will glow with images of falling water, ascending guardians and war-torn Europe set to loud, powerful music blasting from huge speakers on the north lawn on Memorial Hill.
“It's violent, and it's intense,” said National WWI Museum and Memorial President and CEO Matt Naylor. “There’s so much in it. There's so much happening. It's a monumental piece of art.”
During its construction 100 years ago, sculptors carved four “guardian spirits” looking out from the top of the Liberty Memorial tower, wearing helmets and wielding big swords. They represent sacrifice, patriotism and courage. In the first of the video installations, painted and produced by French artist Xavier de Richemont, those guardians glide down from the tower and fight to protect animated versions of figures carved into the 148-foot-long sculpted frieze at the base of the memorial. That follows images of a gigantic waterfall and Europe being symbolically destroyed in World War I.
“He uses all sorts of classic art forms, imagery in the storytelling,’ said Naylor of de Richemont. “He brings the guardians down the tower, and then narrates whatever their character is, and then finally in the end brings them together into the angel of peace, which is on the great frieze, and then takes them back up and puts them back into their home.”
Liberty Memorial has been used as a projection screen before. It was lit with red poppies, symbols of those killed in World War I, in 2018 and 2023. That was relatively easy. This installation is bigger and brighter — and everything moves all around the tower and the monument’s huge north wall, which measures about 40 feet by 400 feet.
“There's about 10 laser projectors on the frieze, and then there are a whole series of projectors around the tower, and then the technical complexity of blending all that together so it looks seamless,” said Naylor. “So, enormous computing power then that supports all of this.”
And spotlights, 40 of them, pointing up. People mistook their reflection off clouds last week for UFOs.
This rolling spectacle is called “Liberty’s Beacon.” It will feature three artistic installations in rotation every weekend through the big centennial celebration Nov. 11th.
Naylor hopes lighting up and animating the virtues celebrated in stone at Liberty Memorial — Courage, Patriotism, Honor and Sacrifice — will spark a little reflection on the part of the electorate.
“I wonder if those things might inform us, and about which we can coalesce despite our differences,” Naylor said. “Our theme for this centennial is ‘Remember Forward.’ Memory is most meaningful when we carry it forward.”
