>>Pre-Proposal Conference, Feb. 4, 1999, in NYC. Closing March 12, 1998, 4:30
P.M.<<

Sorry, the US Government Art Commission Pre-Proposal Conference was not 1999
as I posted, it was 1998. The newspaper has faded and the letters extremely
small, and I was in a hurry. As the grandson of a real estate reporter I felt
I must correct it.

One submission from the previous "contest" by the way, as I remember it, were
to include stratigraphy columns over the appropriate locations, the depths of
which projected onto the column with labels explaining the significance of
the depths shown on the columns. A field of cylinders containing in depiction
what lay below them in explanation, as if they had been bored out and stood
on the ground they came from. Apparently not easy to execute and fabricate,
with enough explanation to do justice to the remains. Other submissions were
more "symbolic."

On July 4 of 1999 a sculpture, commissioned and created out of aluminum in
the US Virgin Islands, was ceremoniously presented along the Hudson River in
the NY State Park there. After the ceremony, it was taken 1 nautical mile for
every body removed from the "African Burial Ground" and buried at sea at the
appropriate distance from the US shore. This ceremony was promoted to bring
"closure" for those of unknown number who died in the crossing of the oceans
to be held in slavery, but died on the way over. This symbolic symbol is to
being duplicated on shore in other parts of the Caribbean and provided as
"tokens" to remind the present of its past. To loosely describe it, it
reminds me of a modern depiction of a "whale bone gate" for those who have
heard or seen of such things, two arches arising from squares on the ground
to almost touch like the gnashing of two large teeth, at the to, through
which one may have walked.

George J. Myers, Jr.