Colossal Mud Monster Head of JFK

Washington, DC

In the Grand Foyer of the Kennedy Center, atop a pedestal, sits a huge mud monster bust of JFK, eight feet high. It was made by famous sculptor Robert Berks, who used the same style of artfully shredded beef on his Albert Einstein statue outside the National Academy of Sciences, and a giant Mr. Rogers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fans of Berks' work describe it as "his distinctly loose style."

According to Berks, he first painted JFK heads of various-sized pieces of plywood and stood them in an abandoned potato field, to figure out how big the head should be. Then he crafted JFK's head with the play of light in mind, so that the President seems youthful and vigorous from one angle, older and exhausted from another.

It's difficult to imagine that the image-conscious JFK would want to be remembered as a gloppy head, but he wasn't around to complain by the time it was unveiled on September 8, 1971.