Army Scraps $600,000 Toad Art Project
The Army, under public and congressional attack for a $600,000 plan to dress up a bus depot at a new military facility near Washington with three pieces of art, such as a 10 foot-tall fairy riding a gurgling toad, has scrapped the project. Instead, it will go with a simple plan to “enhance the aesthetics” of a concrete wall at the new Mark Center in Alexandria, Va.
The reversal came after Washington Whispers, the Drudge Report, and local media focused on the pricey project and one of the leading contenders for the $600,000, a proposal for two murals and a huge toad and fairy sculpture.
Stunned by the expense, noted government watch dog Sen. Chuck Grassley opened an investigation. Initially an Army official, responding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which heads the $1 billion Mark Center construction effort, defended the $600,000 project, saying it was worth just “0.1 percent of the cost” of the new facility.
But in a second response this week, the Army junked the idea and said it would no longer be purchasing a sculpture like the toad or any of the other three proposals under consideration. “Plans for procuring sculpture are being dropped,” the Army told Grassley.
A pleased Grassley told Whispers, “The Army was ready to spend $600,000 on three pieces of questionable art, just when the country is up to its eyeballs in red ink. With a national debt of more than $14 trillion, we’ve got to make sure spending is in line with the national interest.”
The Mark Center is one of the facilities that thousands of defense workers will be reporting to as part of the Base Realignment and Closure plan, or BRAC, that is shifting workers around Virginia and Maryland. The BRAC plan itself has been criticized as wasteful.
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