Victor Davis Hanson: Modern ‘Art’ Is Separating Man from Meaning feat. Sculptor Sabin Howard

0:00The arch in Washington actually surfaced from the arch that I came up with. I was asked to be involved in it. Michelangelo did the cysteine chapel, the Medici tomb, and Raphael painted the Stanza della Sinha Tura and look at St. Peter's. Why should we not do things at that scale today? Art is not collectivism, art is vision. The warmth of collectivism like Mondami says it's such garbage. That's how you eliminate excellence. Hello everybody. This is Victor Davis Hanson for Victor Davis Hanson in his own words. Today I'm solo, neither recording with Sammy Wink or Jack Fowler, but I'm very delighted to have the return of a guest, Sabin Howard, the great sculptor who's going to update us. Last time we on his recent project, last time we talked to him,

1:00he was right on the eve of finishing, they were actually mounting the World War One exhibit on the National Mall and it was a spectacular success. I thought we could begin Sabin just to ask me before we get to your latest projects. Are we all finished with the Memorial Project? Are there any touching up or is there any? No, it's concluded. We did a candlelighting unveiling on September 13th of 2024. Yes. And the public has resoundedly given it a five-star review. That's really good. And just to remind the audience, how many years did you invest in that? Either coming to fruition nine years. Nine and a half years of only that. That was it. That was it. So when you did your really beautiful, famous statues of Hermes,

2:02I'm trying to remember Apollo and Aphrodite, was that prior to that or after? Yeah, I had 35 years of working in the studio from life models, doing figures that were in some ways esoteric, because they were very Greco-Roman figures of single poses, more static, less dynamic, less traumatic. And so then that was kind of like my education of 35 years. And that was, you know, I had a model 40 hours a week for 35 years that adds up. So because I'm a classist, when you were really, those sculptors remind me so much of late four century or early Hellenistic realism, did you get any insight to what people like Skolpa or Pauli Doris was thinking? I mean, those arts had been lost in the late Roman period,

3:03the Byzantine period had lost them, and then the Dark Ages, and they weren't rediscovered to the Renaissance, and then we had perhaps four centuries of mastery of that classical art in sculpture, both bronze and stone. And then it seemed to me that in the 1920s with the modernist movement, Cuba's, we kind of, it wasn't just that we went in a different direction that but people like you didn't really exist as much anymore, that there wasn't training formally. And what got you into the field were you afraid that we might even lose that ability as a people to sculpt as the way that the classical Greeks or Romans did? You're getting it exactly right. What happened is I went to art school in the mid to early 80s, and then I went back to Rome, I'm an Italian citizen as well as American citizen, and I got a really good education,

4:04and that education was around the concept that the figure is a very abstract concept when you translate it into art, and you were looking at the skeleton as the geometry, really the architecture, and then the muscles were the energy that spiraled around this more tectonic or cube-like system. And so the education I received came from Rome, and also from a German man who had come out of Germany and taught at the Philadelphia College of Art in the mid 80s, and what I learned is no longer available in the art schools today. It's been taken out completely, and there's nobody teaching it. And then on top of that, there's nobody teaching than what do you do with that information to tell stories that are visual matters. So it's not just making pretty beautiful art,

5:06that's a Chanel commercial. This is taking that concept of form, and then applying it to the human condition and telling stories about us. It's really unfortunate because this is a concept of tearing down things that are traditional. And outside of the political realm, I consider myself someone who conserves sacred values and sacred ways of building things that represent who we are. I want to add, it's not archeological. This is like a fire that needs to be maintained and played forward. And the World War I memorial is, it doesn't look like something done 500 years ago. It looks connected, but it looks like the form has been reapplied to make it contemporary for our citizens. Was there a, I think we talked about this before, but I know you're very different. You're both similar and different than the Frederick Hart Movement and the National Cathedral,

6:08but there seemed like in the 80s, there was that he had pioneered a renaissance, maybe a return to classical form. But then did that sort of come ossified or did it continue? Or did you feel yourself empowered by that effort? Yeah, I liked what Frederick Hart did, but I liked even more his source, where he went to Bernini and looked at the figure as a dramatic opera that the every man could understand. And I really feel, it's so critical to make art that is understandable and not this cryptic puzzle that you look at it and you don't know what the hell you're looking at. I know it. Yeah. And it's a representation of who we are. And if you don't, ultimately it's a spiritual war because a sculpture of a human being is a representation of us. And we are representations of our maker,

7:11or our creator, we are made in God's image. So by tearing away at the fabric of, you know, what that sculpture stood for, it's like also eliminating God. And that to me was like very ironic because I got this memorial to make in DC, which was kind of the line in the sand when World War I, 22 million people are decimated and the idea of God is God, and is God dead. That was a question that Nietzsche proposed to society. And I think that was what happened in the trenches, I think was a catalyst that fueled the modernist art because people didn't really believe that classical politics or nationhood or classical paradigms of politics worked anymore. And therefore the whole classical pedigree and art and literature, the anti-hero and all of that rose. But we're going to take a brief break and we'll be right back. I'm talking to Sabine Howard.

8:13This, I think the most renowned sculptor in America today, and we're going to get right back in a moment. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily's Signal. I have a new book out on September 8th of this year. And I think you're going to enjoy it. It's called Counter Revolution. The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the Maga Movement. It starts right after January 6th, and it details the lack of popularity of Donald Trump, the invective that he endured, the five civil and criminal trials, the effort to get him off the ballot, the raid on Marlago, the two impeachments earlier, one in which he was tried as a private citizen, and yet he came back. How did he come back? And why did he come back? I explain in the book how he defeated his primary opponents, how he was outspent. He had a hostile media, and he defeated the Democratic machine and Camela Harris. It starts on January 6th. It ends pretty much now in May of 2026.

9:13What's the title about? Donald Trump is not a revolutionary. He's not a revisionist. He's a counter revolutionary. This time around, he is not addressing just the symptoms of the progressive project of the last 50 years. He's talking about the causes, not just an open border, but how to stop illegal immigration entirely, not just crime, but sending the National Garden to make sure cities are safe, not just an Iranian nuclear threat, but ending that threat that seven other presidents had identified, but that did not act on, not just addressing the transgender issue or the Green New Deal and all of those issues that were so dear to the Democratic Party, but ending them, defunding NPR and PBS. So it is a counter revolution to unwind and to roll back the entire progressive project of the last 50 years. I think you're going to like it. It's pretty interesting.

10:14It chronicles the greatest political comeback in our recent political history. Thank you very much. I'm Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. And we're back with Sabine Howard. Just one final question before we go on to your new project. Art historians had argued that the classical sculptures, like praxilities and people, sought to make humans more divine, maybe without imperfections. And then that carried into the Hellenistic period, but we saw that realism almost even in wretched scenes like the Leakowen, but at some point in the late Hellenistic, very late or early Roman period, you started to see people for the first time in classical art portrayed as they really were wrinkled or bent over

11:16or the boxer with a cauliflower ear or the dying gall. Do you, are you trying to idealize a human form? Or do you try to portray it in every aspect of realism, wrinkles, everything? The way it appears to the eye, so to speak? I definitely have a connection to Hellenistic art, and especially the World War I memorial, where we're sculpting veterans and their faces are not beautiful. They have been tormented by their, you know, foray into Hell. I'm every, I had seven veterans, and those faces are their portraits on the wall, and all of them suffer from a form of shell shock, it's called PT, SD today. All of them were combat veterans of one of them tried to commit suicide, not when he worked for me, but before.

12:17And it's very important, I think, because we're in a different era that we have movies, and movies have had such an impact on how we perceive reality through the visual, and movies are very kinetic, usually, and dramatic and explosive, and the screen is, you can't contain the characters, or it's always moving. And so this had, this was, I had to transform myself from the classicist to someone, because I'm making a monument now for the people of our country. I'm in service of the visitors to Washington, DC, to learn a history of our country. So I had to transform this classical knowledge that I had into something that was makes sense for a monument, and what happened was we went into the utmost in terms of kinetic dynamic action, and then I started looking more at like Bernini and like, how do you make it very dramatic? And then, but also maintaining the structure

13:18and the correctness about the human body that the Hellenistic period carried, and that was played forward into Michelangelo. And so these are, the thing is, it's like, I'm not a modernist, and then I want to tear this down and say, oh, that's old, it doesn't matter. No, I'm saying, you've got to look at that stuff, and then you absorb it, and then you have to recreate it in a different system, but you're still using the same form. So I'm not, I am doing, I'm not doing all the wrinkles, but I'm definitely doing the distortion in the faces from the anguish that they put, that they went through in these soldiers, and that's what emotionalized is it. And when you're sculpting from a real live person, and you're there with that person for a thousand hours to make each of those sculptures, and you're looking at them, and that's your information, that's your reference, then that energy transforms into the sculpture, and you capture a part of their soul, and then the public sees, and then they are transformed when they look at that sculpture,

14:19they're transported upwards to that place of higher consciousness. That's what the art does. It's not a degrading victimization of these soldiers. It's a heroic ideal of them, and then you're looking up, and you're not looking down on them, you're looking. That's certainly the reaction that people have had to it, I think, I've followed the reactions in Washington. Yeah, one question, when you're, let's say when you're doing sculpture, like your hermings, you ever get a sense of affinity or wonderment about your classical antecedents, somebody like Scopus or Paul Adora, how did they did it? Do you ever wonder, are they doing what I'm doing, or do they, because you're coming to almost the same level of perfection, but you think your mindset or your skill set are similar to them, even though we can't confirm that, or you feel you're coming to the same conclusion through a different modernist technique or mindset. I had a very revelatory experience.

15:22I went to see the bronzes of Riace in Southern Italy, there are these two bronze figures of warriors, male notes that were dug up from the ocean, and they're elastic. And I entered into the room and I saw the pieces, and I felt this brotherhood in this kinship to these sculptors, because we use the same, I don't use computers, I don't use photographs, I look at a live person, and we do some technology to get the armature going, but then we always revert back to doing it traditionally. So the tools are the same, the casting method is the same. The depiction of a human being is the same. The patine on the bronze, the fabrication of putting all those metal pieces back together is the same. So there was this kinship of like really realizing, wow, those were humans, they did what I did, they, and vice versa, and so we're tied. We're inextricably tied. There's this concept in modernism

16:24that we're always progressing, which is a load of hooi. We're not always progressing, sometimes something's get better, but sometimes we lose aspects of our humanity and our self, and we're in a very critical moment here with AI and technology, where everybody's being fed this pack of lies, that this will make your life better. It doesn't always happen that way. That's what Hezier, the great seventh century BC poem, poet said in the works and days that with what he would, a loose translation, would material progress comes moral regress, and he had it kind of almost determinants. Let's, you're doing, you're engaged on a really colossal new project, as I understand reading about it, talking to people, and you're working again in bronze, not stone, as I understand. You're going to make, is the official name, the Liberty Arch, the purpose, and you're going to be, is that going to be

17:24the largest bronze sculpture in the United States? Grand Liberty Arch. Yes. It's 56 figures, and the ones on the relief are eight to nine feet in height, telling the story of our history, and the figures on top of the arch are 12 foot scale. So we're doubling the scale of the world, we're one of the most important, and 56 figures that's unheard of, all sculpted from life. I want to make an American parthenon to celebrate our country, and we have a lot to celebrate, and I don't think artists are stepping forth and putting their skills to good use. So I was like, nobody came up with an idea to make a monument, so I was like, okay, I will come up with an idea. But it seems to me that that's a monumental undertaking in the realm of financing it, finding the suitable location, and then you're going to have to assemble, that's more than a one

18:26person job, you're going to have to assemble a team, and the sheer scope and size, it seems to involve expertise in metallurgy and engineering, and all of that, and that's a pretty huge project, isn't it? You're raising funds to do this, bringing a crew of five sculptors together under one roof, and then I have already a foundry that's incredible in the UK that we did the World War One Memorial, that's the casting process, and then building the architectural arch that the figures go on to, and then you know, this is not like one of those two to three year projects, this is like an eight to nine year project, where you, pieces of art, usually today, okay, do it in a year, and then this is next level, this is returning to what is the possibility of humanity, and I'm not a very strong proponent of like, well, okay, we did, what Michelangelo did, the Sistine Chapel, the

19:30Medici too, and Rafael pointed the stance of the La Singatura and look at St. Peter's, why should we not do things at that scale today, and we're being told, oh, well, you know, that's of the past, and I'm going to prove you wrong. We can, where do you, where, where will be the appropriate ideal location to, to put this monumental sculpture? Well, I came to, to, to Utah and Salt Lake, but as we speak, I am packing up my house and leaving Utah, and we are headed to Texas, because I feel Texas is the rebirth of our nation today. And I, I believe that an area like Dallas for Earth is a very local, it's, it's an area that is booming. And it's also an area that has, Texas has, I believe 32 million people. And so you, you need to put it in a place that is, what is the country going to become?

20:32It's no longer East Coast and West Coast. No, they're falling away. And Texas is rising. And so I'm going there to do, to make this happen. Do you have it? Is it going to, you envision in a park or functional or roadway or something like the, the arch in St. Louis, you know, the, go west young manarchs that type of thing? I envision it as a part of a, a, a, cradled around a classical buildings could be an institution that carries it because sculpture does not just stand alone. It needs to have a backdrop and environment. The architecture around it, that gives it a sense of sacredness and elevated space. And the sculpture becomes a focal point to a spot in maximum space. We need as two acres. It could be one acre even, but anywhere in that range and the, the arch will sit within a plaza that you can see the whole thing. And then you can approach it and see the individual small features of those,

21:34of those characters in the sculpture. Have you started a formal fundraising campaign yet? We're about to start now when I go to Dallas and we are going to build an organization around it. So this gets first of all national publicity through PR campaign. And then we need to have an organization of fundraising to make this happen and development. And so that's what we in Utah that didn't completely coalesce here. And I, I felt like, okay, Utah is 4.2 million. That's the whole state. It's not a big enough venue. And so you got, you got to go to a big venue here. And I also thought we should have a constitutional center and a historical center around this monument because what we're doing is we're looking at our history here. That's why you make the monument not, not to make a pretty piece of art, but you're doing a story and that stories our history and that brings us together.

22:34And that's for the next generation. So we maintain the pride in our country. There's too much tearing down. And this is my response to Bill. I think it's, I think it's an opportune location because the University of Texas has this new civics program that they're inaugurating. And then the University of Austin, which we have people that I know, you know, Neil Ferguson and people are on the board. And they're trying to restore classical values and education, disinterested, socratic teaching. And there's certainly a lot of capital. Just I know it's so early that it's almost impossible to envision, but just as an outsider, this must, this will probably require what it called 30, 40, 50, 60 million dollars to get such a team for so long, wouldn't it? Well, we break, if we break it down, I think the whole thing could be done very close to 50 million dollars, including the architecture. Really? And the closet, yeah. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, it is, it really, we are really looking at it as a, what is the structure

23:37of it over an eight year period so that we build it, you know, every year's, it's proceeding. So the 50 million is not crazy at all. You look at pieces of garbage like Frank Eri's, yes, what was $160 million? I didn't know it was that much. Nobody goes, nobody goes. No, I don't. I don't go on. Yeah. World War One Memorial was 50 million as well. And this is three times the scale. So and there's a lot of capital in Texas and a lot of people. Do you feel as you go through this project and given the success of the World War One monument that the dominant school of sculpture and art in general, which I would call modernism, modernism, representational impressionistic or postmodernism, have they made peace with you in your school? You think art, is it live and let live? Or are they still actively trying to ridicule or caricature what you do?

24:40There are words on top of the arch that victory. This will say everything. It says on one side of the arch, it says in God, we trust. Yes. And on the other side, it says, e plurbus. And those are words that modernists do not like. Yes. In the neighborhood that we were going to put it up here up by the capital, they said, well, why don't you change in God, we trust to in love, we trust. It's, it is, this is complete disconnect from the sacred and that the human beings are sacred in our history is sacred. And these were, but were these artists or were these, so how about, how about the art community? The art community ignores me. Yeah. And, and it doesn't really matter because what the art community is, you know, it's going down in flames right now. You have people say to pick an arbitrary age, 40 under 40 that call you or say,

25:45I'd like to follow in your footsteps or do you, that your movement is building? Yes. Yes. Remember last podcast you asked me, you're winning, right? And now I can answer you. Yes. We are winning. I have a huge fan club of 30 year olds. 30 year olds are, they love what I'm doing because it speaks of the possibilities of our life, the potential, the sculptures, you know, just think that you're making something massive like that. That shows like standing in a place of like massive possibility. It's like Elon Musk and, okay, we're going to shoot for the stars. I'm saying, let's do the same thing with the art. And because it's a representation of who we are. And so you must represent humanity in our country with something that's dignified and elevated and outstanding because I think our country is something that will never happen again. And we must protect it. This, and I'll ask you a controversial question.

26:45Please. The members of the Trump administration are stressing it and they're, they're beginning to get a lot of criticism, you know, because he has a tendency for gold and, and elaboration. And, and so they're, or billing as I understand a 250, they're planning an art somewhere in Arlington. Does that distract, enhance, and I don't want you put you on a spot. That's not a political question. But the idea that the government is in some way more supportive of classical trends, even though they may be, they're taking different approaches that might be more Hellenistic than classical. Does that help give attention? Or does it, do you draw in people that try to criticize you because Trump is trying to do or people in that administration are trying to bring back classical tropes? The, the, the Archand Washington actually surfaced from the arch.

27:46And I came up with I was asked to be involved in it. And that's what I thought. Yeah, I read about that. That forward. And I was like, well, they wanted to get it done by July 4th of this year to celebrate the 50th. And I refused to do an arch in a, in a cement, which I don't feel is a noble material to represent our country. And so the people that were involved, they went and they got a construction company to come up with the design. And I think that the concept is a brilliant idea to make things that speak well of our country. But I think it's not, um, doesn't have the depth in terms of the creative aspects because what made our country so incredible was the every man. And so you, if you make an arch that is 250 feet high, and then it stands next to the Lincoln Memorial, which is, I believe it's 75 feet high. You're dwarving it. And at the same time, you're also making something that is not human scale.

28:51So it speaks less about each of us as American citizens and more about the almighty power of the country. And so you're using a template that goes back to the Napoleonic, a vision of like how do we represent our country? So I don't think it's appropriate, but I applaud the building, not the tearing down. And that's my point of view as an artist. I want to make things that have more figures than them because the stories of those figures interacting are something that the every man can associate with and see themselves within. I think the arch, a lot of people are like, well, that's beautiful, but it does, it's not going to capture you for longer than a second. It's like a Chanel commercial. It's like wow. And then you move on. You need something to like get people pulled in more. Yes. That's art historians always remarked that in the Parthenon freezes the crease,

29:53the hair behind the charioteers or some of the God, the lap, you can, the people below couldn't really see them clearly, but they would ponder. Yeah. And it was very important for the artists to know that they weren't blank. No, the words that even though you might not be able to see them 25, 30 feet below, I can guarantee you they're not just one dimensional. And that was very important. So I know that 19th century people who study them were kind of after Lord Belgian brought most of them. They were kind of shocked that even they envisioned them in between the medipedes and they thought, wow, why did they do this when people down on the ground couldn't really see the whole backside? But it was the idea, I guess, and the skill on it. And the notion that it was there that these were real sculptures. That was important. Did I had another question when do you have any contact at all?

30:54And I'm trying to be as open minded as possible. Do you have any with art departments? What is the status of sculpture, whether in bronze or stone today in art departments in the United States? Oh, that's a very sad question because you don't have the education anymore. And of actually, how do you how do you do it? The nuts and bolts of building armature and then how do you look at a model and the drawing skills of translation? Figurative artists is when you do it well. Yes, it's not copying. It's not mimicking. It's translating. And so this is empirical knowledge that about anatomy and skeleton and the proportions and the design of the figure that all are that's Western civilization. And so is is a lot of these schools have like to, you know, not really valued the the value of one Western civilization stands for.

31:56And then the figures attached to Western civilization. It's a representation of all these different cultures that have proceeded to us. It's just kind of seen as old fashion and archaeological. And so the the it's there are at the liaison have sprung up all over the country, but the problem with the at the liaison is they're not teaching. Then what do you do with the figure once you've learned the technique? And that's and so then it falls into this modernist trap where it's just form and it's not stories. And so that this is something that I'm trying I'm pulling forward. Sometimes I feel like I'm alone doing this. It's how do you make sculptures that are not only individual figures, but interactive all these because we're relational as human beings. And then and then tell a story that is actually understand, understandable by an eighth grader. And then it has many levels of understanding, but it's understandable.

32:58And and instantly recognizable from a point of view that I'm not in the art role, but wow, that's amazing. And so they you're fighting something that's been going on for hundreds of years. And I believe the classicism fell to the wayside back in the 1880s because it started to lose its grip on like telling great stories about us. They became flowery and decorative. And the French are the worst at this. They take things because they don't believe in God. Their nihilistic society for the most part and it came up with a term classic classicism. It was invented by the French. It didn't come from Italy. Italy was more attaching the figure to sacred values and God. And so dismissing Western civilization and God eliminated from the art schools because they say, well, those are irrelevant things. There's a comeback though because a lot of people are turning to God today. And they're also turning to Western civilization to look forward.

33:59We're on the on the board editors of encounter books and they just have published the golden thread, which is a beautiful and Roger Kimball is the editor. And he he brought a budget to us. And he spent an enormous amount of money not just getting scholars who appreciated the story from Greece to the present, art, literature, history, et cetera, but it's so beautifully produced that the pages and the quality and the binding, you spend a enormous amount of money and people thought you'll never, but the odd thing is that the more the more beautiful the book is that reflects the message, the more it's selling now. And people just were kind of a gas. If I were to ask you a controversial question and I think I will. If let me just take some of your earlier work, if I say you're a Apollo, and I ask you say, being how many people alive now in the United States, if Victor had the money and say, I want an Apollo like that or a caliber like

35:02that, how many people could do it to make that sculpture? Yes. Yes. It's almost no one almost what I was afraid of. Because it's not just making a sculpture. It's also like you have thousands, hundreds of thousands of parts. And although it's hundreds of thousands of parts within the figure are proportionally correct to the whole. So you're not only sculpting it, but you're also creating the system of higher archipelago importance. And that's that's a philosophical thing of that's gone, the sense of like unity where you have all these thousands of parts, but they're, they're not anything unless they're all together within a higher article hole of one figure. And that's a system that is a mimicking what the universe is like. The universe is a unified whole and made up of many, many millions and billions and trillions of parts when you look up into the galaxy, but it's one. It's a oneness.

36:03And I wonder if there are people in Italy still don't you think? Yeah, but they're more craftsmen craftsmen. They're it's tech, tech, traditions and there's a difference between an artist and a technician. Are there even, are there even technicians that could emulate it? If you said to them, here's my sculpture. This is what it meant. I don't expect you to have the, the ability as an artist to understand the components. All I'm asking because I'm just doing a, the banal test. Do any of you have the technical capacity without AI or anything else? To do what I did if I showed you exactly could they take a picture of what you did and do it? Or has that skill also been lost? It's still there to a point. But there's a, you know, this, it's like the, what's the difference between Michael Jordan and the ones just below him? I'm not trying. It's just that's what it is. It's it's a, you don't have, so you don't have people that are trying to

37:08combine their knowledge of history, philosophy, religion and try to form a new image or a new idea or a new symbol or a new message. They're just, you make choices based on those stories. And so then it's, it's driven by more than just the art. It's, you go, let's go back to the, the, the golden thread. We, I think that's very important. My wife Tracy Slatton shot video footage of the making of the world. We're one more every day in a studio for nine years. And so we have a very exciting news. We, we've put together a documentary called heroic, the making of the world, we're one more at the beginning of the first quarter of 27. Uh, that stand by this. And you and your wife also wrote a book didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. And I wrote another book that about them. What did, what did I go through as an artist for the last 40 years? It's, it, the, it's, I'm so radical. It's crazy. I'm, I'm revolutionary because I'm not revolutionary.

38:11I feel sometimes that, well, I, I'm living on a farm. So people say to me, you work at Stanford University and you're an academic and you tend to be more traditional, it's conservative. What the blank are you doing? And why aren't you living in Powell, Thormino Park? And why do you commute 200 miles from the Southern San Joaquin Valley? But I think everybody understands that conformity is not the answer to. Yeah. Yeah. But I was going to ask you another question. Uh, so, and this is just a technical question. So we have thousands of people are going to listen to this and they're going to be fascinated. So they can go to your website at, well, we, we have a grand liberty arch. Dot, yes. Okay. Sabin, Sabin Howard dot com. And I'm on Instagram. You can Google it or AI it and there's tons of information. And soon they can donate. Is that right? You'll, you'll have a way where people can go right to your website and they don't

39:13know. Oh, good. It's a very grand liberty arch has a page for donations. Yeah. And I can be contacted. Yeah. Do you? Are there people? Um, so if you were a younger person listening and you had our, demonstrable art skills and you were a sculptor and let's say, I'd like to do what Sabin is doing. And let's say they can't study directly with you because you've got all these other tasks. Would you recommend they go to Italy, go to Europe? Go, how would they get that type of training that you had, you kind of empirically found on your own without somebody saying, okay, you want to be a bronze sculptor? You got to go here, here, here. I guess, I guess if you had to make a choice, I would go to Florence to one of the Atelier's in Florence to study. I mean, the other one is the Lyme Academy in Connecticut. It's a good base to start when if you're just a young kid coming out of high school on the early 20s.

40:13And then from there, it's, um, the problem is New York Academy has become, um, that's a graduate. They're very, very expensive. I think the $75,000 a year and sort of that. That actually hampers your ability to become an artist because then you have to spend time paying back your loans and do you have, do you have any of these people at all that call up and say, yeah, I got a lot of, I want, but how about the universities that have the, are the studios that they ever say, well, I might not agree with you, but I can see that your movement is becoming popular. And would you just come and give a guest lecture? Do you get, yeah, you do a lot. A lot. And this is another reason that I'm moving to the Dallas Fort Worth area. We're moving to Austin, but that's Austin. I think it's more allergic to what I do. Yes. I, I, I am connecting with a university in Dallas. So I don't want to speak prematurely till we have done this.

41:15Um, but I believe that the monument will be connected to an important Catholic university in, in the Dallas area. And we're going to talk in the next month. And this is my studio being open to that school. And again, we're going to do another documentary around the making. And there might even be a development. And we don't know of an art department. And I'm a beginning of an apprenticeship system for next generations. That would be good. I know that for the last 21 years until I got ill last year, um, I went to Hillsdale College for, and they had Larry Arnton had a vision of rebuilding the entire, the present, the entire campus, which he did in Neal Classical. It's very well done. And then he wanted to build this cathedral. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's Christ church of Oxford. And it's in this little town of 12,000 people. And people said, well, this, this particular year that I think it was 23 or 24,

42:18where it was finished. And they said, no one is going to, I mean, it's just too large for this. This would be something of a 40,000 person campus, not, you know, 2,200 or something. And this little town can't. And yet when you go there, there's people who drive miles and miles and miles away, not just to see the size of it, but they get some idea of what a cathedral, a Roman ask cathedral is like. Yeah. And I know that they have associate programs with all sorts of colleges, Thomas Aquinas, University of Dallas, all of these colleges have this, they're small and isolated at this point, but they're growing very fast. And they're, yeah, people are trying to support them. Yeah. And they're, and they're multifaceted. They want literature, art, music. And they feel that if they don't do it in this generation, it's going to be lost. That's, that's their evangelical message in the secular sense.

43:18Art's not, art is not collectivism. Art is vision. Is this cuddly warm, the warmth of collectivism like Montgomery says, it's such garbage. It's, you know, you want to, that's how you eliminate excellence. And art is about excellence and genius and vision. And that's what we remember because that represents us. So it's, this is inextricably tied. The politics to the art, I hate it because I'm apolitical. I feel like most politicians are downstream in terms of consciousness. And the rubbish that is spewed on it's vitriol. It's not unifying. Unfortunately, there, you know, there is good and evil. They're in you and you have to make certain choices. And so objective truths are something that we really must hold on to because it's not like I'm okay. You're okay. No, it's not. There are many aspects of being an amazing human being and hitting your potential

44:21that are driven by like, well, culture and cultures that kind of like this beacon or North star that leads us forward. It's not reality. It's like what we can be. And hence, that's why I would go do something like this. It's so crazy and epic and drive around the country till I locate the right spot and put my life on hold to make something like this happen because I believe that I'm 63. I'm past that point of just doing something in my studio for myself. I'm here to serve my country and serve people outside of myself. That's my purpose at this point. And so I've entered into a battle against darkness actually. The spiritual battle. It's not it goes beyond politics. Yes. Point. I think that's an opportune moment because I work right next to Silicon Valley. And I've noticed because I speak there sometimes and I know some of the people there. It does seem to me that they were at some point, even though the AI is problematic.

45:27There were a number of people who felt we made all this money. We have a $12 trillion in market capitalization where the wealthiest zip code in the history of civilization. We have all these affordances, but there's something lacking. And we've got to do something for the country. I get that feeling. I know that I spoke to some people and they said, I think, you know, whether even in something that is where you wouldn't find it, let's say, military procurement, where they would say, I just don't want to make a weapon and get rich. I want to make something that will defend the United States. Say a global dome from attacked by people, the way that the war production board brought in William Newtson and Henry Kaiser and Henry Ford to give up three or four years of their life to develop a defensive mechanism to preserve the United States. But I can see that now.

46:27Elon Musk is a controversial figure. I've never met him. But when you start to, I've been trying to follow him and see what his train of thought is. It's more, I mean, he sleeps on the engineering, engineering boardroom. He sleeps on the, he has very modest lifestyle for being a trillionaire first in history. But he does really believe that all of these technologies are very dangerous. But the one country that has a consensual government, a tripartite government and a Bill of Rights might be the best custodian of them that are inevitable would be developed. And so there is a, and all of these people, there's something patriotic that's embryotic and growing that I don't, I didn't see 20 or 10 years ago. And that's hopeful for me. It is that I can see people, people I disagree with ideologically or politically, doesn't matter. They all feel we're on the same boat. And there are certain forces that are very within our country and without that are,

47:30we're in the postmodern apology and we got to be very careful about relativism and old ancient hatreds and things that are resurfacing. And we're all in this together. It's not as Republican or Democrat conservative or liberal, but people who want to preserve the culture and the civilization. And we all believe that we don't have to be perfect to be good. We're not utopian. And I think that's very important. And so I really hope that everybody that's listening will help Sabine Sabine, Howard in this new project. Is it officially called the Great Liberty Arch? Grant. Grant. Grant Liberty. And you have, and you have on your website, both the arch website and your own, you have pictures and references they can go to. Yeah. We have actually, we have built a six foot model. So it's a one tenth model.

48:32And that model was recently unveiled at the ARC conference in London in in front of 4,500 people. Wow. And this is a very interesting thing because it's like now we're taking this monument to a whole global thing, but building it in Texas. I bet there's going to be a lot of Texans that are going to step up. I really do. I believe so. Yeah. I'm going to bet my bet my life on it. And that's why I think it's I think it's I think you have good, I think you have good odds. Sabine. Yeah. And that. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. It's been a pleasure. See you. Thank you, Victor. Every state is home to significant historic sites that tell the American story, but not every site is telling that story honestly and fairly. That's why the Heritage Foundation created the Heritage Guide to Historic Sites. This interactive guide equips American citizens with the tools they need to enjoy the sites that to pick some of the greatest moments in our nation's history,

49:36analyzing them for historical accuracy and provides resources for families or educators planning a visit from Mount Vernon to Independence Hall to Getty's Burk and more Americans deserve transparency and sites that steward our history faithfully deserve our gratitude. The Heritage Guide to Historic Sites invites every American to rediscover the places and stories that define our nation, whether it's across the country or in your backyard, visit historic sites dot heritage dot org to start your adventure today. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.