Here’s a podcast – a first on this blog – of Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, appearing on US Modernist Radio to denounce Frank Gehry’s design for a proposed modernist memorial to Frank— oops! I mean to Dwight Eisenhower. The podcast is a short bit down the left of the USModernist Radio website, and lasts about 51 minutes.

Modernist Radio? That’s right. I am posting this podcast despite not having listened to it all. I am listening to it right now. It starts out with a jingle that goes “Mama don’t allow no architecture around here” – or something like that. The very concept of modernist radio strikes me as absurd – and I am joined in that opinion by the moderator of the show, George Smart, and his sidekick, or wingman, Frank King – both no doubt downplaying their own importance in a jocular vein.

So Modernist Radio really is fun, and let’s not forget that they have invited Justin Shubow on to criticize Gehry’s Ike memorial design. And, according to the description on the website of Modernist Radio, the moderators actually agree. Maybe this podcast belongs in my “Architecture that Dare Not Speak Its Name” collection.

On this podcast, although he criticizes the National World War II Memorial on the Mall – unjustly, I believe – Shubow does do a very good job lecturing his interlocutors on what memorials should be if they are to serve their purpose of explaining an American icon to Americans a century from now.

And by the way, the second half of the podcast features an interview with a few quotidian modernist architects whose houses have won low-level modernist prizes. Fascinating!!!