The Hill<\/a> reported today on an interesting history behind a life-size bust created to honor Dan Quayle in the Capitol in Washington.<\/p>\nBefore I get into it, I know what you’re thinking. Why is Quayle getting honored at all? It turns out that the Senate began venerating all vice presidents with a bust collection starting in 1885.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that’s not the interesting part. As The Hill explained, “like his star-crossed tenure as the nation’s 44th vice president, the effort to produce a head and shoulders sculpture of the former Indiana Republican senator and House member has not followed a smooth path.”<\/p>\n
This is an understatement.<\/p>\n
In 1999, a renowned sculptor named Frederick Hart was chosen to create the Quayle bust. After two sittings with the former vice president, Hart died suddenly.<\/p>\n
So the project then went to another sculptor, Vincent Palumbo, the master stone carver at the National Cathedral. Shortly after winning the Quayle assignment, Palumbo died too.<\/p>\n
The bust then went to Daniel Sinclair, a stone carver in Long Island. Sinclair did not have to actually bring Quayle to his studio for a sitting; he instead worked from photographs.<\/p>\n
Now I don’t believe in curses or signs, but I have to wonder if Sinclair had any reservations about the project knowing that the first two sculptors died unexpectedly.<\/p>\n
Poor Quayle. Nothing ever goes easily for the guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m not superstitious, but this one struck me as a little odd. The Hill reported today on an interesting history behind a life-size bust created to honor Dan Quayle in the Capitol in Washington. Before I get into it, I know what you’re thinking. Why is Quayle getting honored at all? It turns out that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}