page_title: Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (Portland, Oregon)
section_title: Reception
hierarchical_section_title: Theodore Roosevelt Memorial (Portland, Oregon) / Reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Benito Mussolini
context_page_description: The Theodore Roosevelt Memorial is a lost monument and sculpture commemorating the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, as well as veterans of the Spanish–American War. It was originally installed in Portland's Battleship Oregon Park. Designed by American artist Oliver L. Barrett, the 18-foot memorial was erected in 1939, but disappeared in 1942 after being relocated temporarily during the construction of Harbor Drive. It featured a geometric tufa statue depicting a man not resembling Roosevelt, as well as a smaller realistic sculpture of him. The monument initially received a generally unfavorable reception, but was considered one of Barrett's best-known artworks.
context_section_description: The memorial was reportedly an "instant landmark" upon its installation and a site not to be missed by visitors to downtown Portland. The Oregonian called the artwork "a man-sized controversy". Critics described the monument as "a Frankenstein's monster", "a monstrosity", and "bad art". Others said the statue was "stately" and resembled Benito Mussolini, the 27th Prime Minister of Italy. In 1945, following Barrett's death in 1943, Hermione Bain of The Register-Guard said the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial was one of the artist's best-known public artworks, along with Shemanski Fountain in Portland's South Park Blocks.
  The Oregonian published in 1983:
  When in February of '39 [Barrett's] work was unveiled ... the figure proved to be a massive, 14-foot-tall hunk of tufa, cubistically planed. What's more, rather than the heroic president it purported to honor, it resembled no less an anti-hero than Mussolini. The timing, with the Axis war boiling toward our shores, couldn't have been worse. 'A monstrosity!' the public roared. 'A Frankenstein!' The berated monster didn't hang around long. In 1941, during the reconstruction of the marine park, it was found necessary to move him temporarily to warehouse quarters. Though it would seem hard to lose such a massive man-stone, it was the last the figure was ever heard of or seen.
  In 2017, Douglas Perry of The Oregonian described the memorial as "one of Portland's lost public-art masterpieces (or grotesque curiosities, depending on one's artistic taste)". The newspaper's Grant Butler included the monument in his overview of "14 Portland treasures trashed in the name of progress", and wrote, "if you look closely, it actually bears closest resemblance to the art deco figure of Academy Award trophies". Perry called the work "striking" in his 2018 overview of "29 only-in-Portland people and places you'll never see in the Rose City again". In 2019, he wrote: "The memorial was not well received... Most Portlanders shrugged when they learned the memorial had disappeared, if they learned about it at all. This was the statue, after all, that had been derided as 'uncommonly ugly' and 'apropos of nothing,' and it hadn't been around long enough to grow on people." Perry also opined:
  Maybe Barrett's Theodore Roosevelt Memorial was ugly. Maybe its style did not fit its time. But it was a large-scale piece by a well-known Oregon artist, and it honored war veterans and one of America's greatest presidents. The monument, whatever critics thought of it, was arguably Barrett's most ambitious undertaking. Its disappearance deserved more than a collective shrug.
caption: Some critics said the memorial's statue resembled Benito Mussolini (pictured).
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