Q. David Bowers
"Mint sculptor-engravers submitting designs were: Edgar Z. Steever IV (one obverse and one reverse); John Mercanti (two obverses and one reverse); Maria Kirby-Smith (two obverse and two reverse); and Elizabeth Jones (one obverse)."
The Commission of Fine Arts did have a small voice in the final design in that mem-ber Diane Wolf criticized the fact that the inscription E PLURIBUS UNUM appeared in a different lettering style from the rest of the inscriptions. The serifs in the word PLURIBUS were removed to match the S in EISENHOWER. (From an account in Coin World: "Mint Releases Dollar Designs," October 11, 1989, p. 1.)
Minutes of the Commission meeting of September 21, 1989, indicate that members were pleased with the new Eisenhower motifs and approved them unanimously. On October 6, 1989, Commission Chairman J. Carter Brown wrote to Mint Director Donna Pope as follows: "I am happy to tell you that the designs were enthusiastically approved."
Mint Director Donna Pope's View
In an interview with the author, (February 11, 1991.) Mint Director Donna Pope explained what happened with the competition: "On the 1990 dollar we didn't get good designs from the artists. We submitted the designs to the treasurer's office, and Kay Ortega didn't like them either. There was nothing we could forward to the secretary of the Treasury. We tried to stick with the policy of submitting 'three and three' designs three obverse designs and three reverse designs-but there wasn't anything that we could send. Sometimes all artists at the Mint want to submit a design, and sometimes just a few want to. It is the job of the chief engraver to assure that we get designs.
"In recent years most [staff artists] have submitted designs, but not all. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of times when Elizabeth Jones herself did not submit a design. For the Eisenhower we asked for more designs and still didn't get anything good. Then John Norris from Citibank at an ICTA [Industry Council for Tangible Assets trade group] meeting asked if Eisenhower was to be shown as general or as president. He noted that people might think a general was too militaristic. That started me thinking that maybe we should have both. I asked Andy Cosgarea, production director, to contact our engraving staff and have them very quickly send a sketch with Eisenhower as both a president and a general John Mercanti worked on it over the weekend. The call went out on Friday and we got the sketch on Monday. We submitted Mercanti's proposal to the secretary of the Treasury, and it was so obviously outstanding compared to the rest that he selected it."
Elizabeth Jones's Comments
In a letter to the author, Elizabeth Jones gave her view of the Eisenhower competition: ("Choosing What to Honor." Coinage, December 1988, p. 13.) "The reason it was less and less possible for me (or will be for any of my successors unless given more administrative support staff) to submit designs, is simply the ever increasing work load. Unlike my predecessors I had also the responsibility for the resumed and rapidly increasing commemorative program, the newly introduced bullion program, and an ongoing improvement effort of the regular coinage, which now starts every year from scratch.
"The reason why the Engraving Department submitted fewer and fewer designs was their increasing disillusionment with the pre-selection procedure and their discouragement of ever being considered on equal terms with the outside artists (the staff had to identify their entries by name, not by code word or number like the outsiders).
"With regard to the selected design for the Eisenhower dollar, John Mercanti was the only one (as Philadelphia Mint officials can confirm) who was asked to do the double portrait version of the Eisenhower coin. Neither other members of the Engraving Department nor anyone among the outside artists were asked to submit additional designs. Consequently, his double-headed design had no competition."
Ed Reiter Comments
Numismatic columnist Ed Reiter had this to say about the coin. "Another ill-conceived coin already lies in wait in 1990, now that Congress has authorized a commemorative silver dollar to honor former President Dwight D. Eisenhower on the 100th anniversary of his birth. Under other circumstances I would have no quarrel with such a coin. As a wartime hero and much admired president, Dwight Eisenhower certainly merited coinage recognition. He got that recognition in 1971 when his portrait was placed on the circulating $1 coin. What's more, the recognition continued for the better part of a decade-until 1978, when production of the coin was discontinued.
"Why, then, do we need a second Ike dollar now, so soon after the issuance of the first one? And why, in heaven's name, must the coin bear the likeness of his farmhouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania-a building almost no one will recognize and that has so little to do with the public's recollection of Eisenhower's life?
"What we need, it seems to me, is a special advisory panel that would study all proposals for commemorative coins and then make recommendations on which should be approved. This panel should include respected individuals with in-depth knowledge of American history. It also would make sense to have a representative from the Commission of Fine Arts. And coin collectors surely should have a voice -for they, after all, form the primary market for such coins and they could provide perspective on U.S. coinage programs of the past."
Reiter quoted the views of professional numismatist Rick Sundman of Littleton Coin Company on the subject: "It's like [making endless sequels to movies, such as] Rambo 5. You can't believe they are still doing this. It can't be because the first Ike dollar was such a hit. Don't get me wrong. I want them to make all the new coins that they can. But there must be something significant besides this that happened a hundred years ago. Let's be consistent. If the coin is intended to commemorate his birth shouldn't it show his birthplace? Then, again, why show a building at all? But I guess it's not surprising, in view of the fact that the sponsors of the bill are from Pennsylvania."
In an article published in April 1990, by which time the Eisenhower coin was a reality, Ed Reiter reprinted these two widely disparate reviews, among others."
Alex Shagin, a former staff artist at the Leningrad Mint, had this to say: "The two portraits of Ike take away from each other. There is no power in either of them-no sense of the man, no spirit. Eisenhower literally looks like a shadow of himself. He looks more like Janus, the double-faced god of the pagan Romans. As for the reverse, I find it almost unbearable .... Ike's house is a shapeless, sloppy composition. If you were to make a black and white silhouette interpretation, it would just be a messy spot on a piece of paper."
Cornelius Vermeule, distinguished art historian and curator of classical art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, felt just the opposite: "I like it very much. Since the time of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and his pupils we haven't really had great coinage art. It hasn't been all downhill, but we've sort of had bumps and grinds. Now, suddenly, here comes a terrific coin. The house is positioned artistically so it really looks like a Gettysburg retreat, and I like the idea of having the five-star general facing one way and the civilian Eisenhower, toward the end of his career, facing the other. It's innovative, imaginative, and very good."