The Awakening is one of my favorite sculptures... ever. When I was in my starry-eyed early twenties, my family and I came to D.C. on a vacation and we saw this stature for the first time. I have an embarrassingly young looking photo of me sitting in his left hand from that trip. For the first twenty seven years of his frozen stupor, he was located at Haines Point in Potomac Park (Now he's been moved to the National Harbor.). I've been to see him on sunny days, and extremely late at night when I'm pretty sure it wasn't safe to be anywhere near him. He's always reminded me of that quote from Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
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January 3, 2009 at 8:51 AM
That is neat. I have never been to D.C. so I have never heard of it. It's the kind of tourist thing I like to go see.
January 4, 2009 at 2:27 AM
I've always missed this guy on my various jaunts to DC. You'll have to point me in the right direction next time I come.
January 4, 2009 at 9:52 AM
I'm still really bummed that the Park Service and the artist let The Awakening be taken from Haines Point. The National Capital Planning Commission really dropped the ball on that one. And those of us who live in the District did, too. We should have banded together to buy the piece. It sold for less than $1 million to the developer of the National Harbor Project. I love this sculpture, but I'm disinclined to go the the N.H. just to see it. Call it matter of principle, I guess.