You’d struggle to find a more perfect metaphor to capture Donald Trump’s brash, self-aggrandizing modus operandi than the proposed National Garden of American Heroes, a gaudy tourist attraction built to whitewash history using tens of millions in funding stripped from actual historical conservation and scholarship programs. The icing on the cake here is that it is already being sued.
The garden has been the source of much derisive humor, but still looked to be going according to plan, opening to coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations in July 2026. Now, experts have poured cold water on the idea, claiming that it’s fundamentally impractical.
“It seems completely unworkable,” Daniel Kunitz, editor of Sculpture magazine, told Politico.
The issues lie in the capacity for the American sculpting sector to actually undertake the work. White House communications in the executive orders passed to get the project done demand fine, realistic depictions of such figures as Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. There are fewer than 70 workshops capable of undertaking such work in the United States, and most of them are booked out six to 18 months in advance.
“You’d be flooding the capacity of artists in this country who do that kind of stuff, and the capacity of foundries,” said Dylan Farnum, former head of one of the nation’s top fine-art sculptors.
On top of this, sculptors will not be chosen until late September, with a delivery deadline of June 1, 2026; commission grants are thought to be lower than necessary to complete the work in the requisite materials; and the White House has yet to select a location for the garden.
Of course, there is one place the Trump administration could turn to to get the job done faster—China. The Asian superpower rival has a significant advantage when it comes to pumping out life-like replicas, but the quality may not meet American standards.
While it remains to be seen just how the statues in the garden will be crafted, a Chinese-made National Garden of American Heroes would certainly not go unnoticed.
