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THURSDAY

Is our city becoming another government treasure on display? Case in point: the new FDR Memorial. Four terms in office are framed in separate outdoor rooms; it’s a museum with the roof peeled off. Franklin sits with his larger-than-life Scottie at his feet. Eleanor stands in a niche around the corner. On one wall hangs a bronze sculpture with braille so large it’s unreadable. The supposedly accessible memorial prizes form over function, making a mockery of FDR’s social agenda and enshrining 20th-century executive power. Architects Hugh Hardy and George Hartman, Architecture magazine editor Deborah K. Dietsch, and National Capitol Planning Commission appointee Margaret G. Vanderhye will address the scale, design, and “appropriateness” of the controversial FDR and World War II memorials in their panel discussion, “The Memorialization of the Mall.” Be there to ask why the nation needs to tear up an entire strip of the Mall green to make way for a cultural mausoleum. At 6:30 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Hammer Auditorium, 17th & New York Ave. NW. $12. (202) 639-1770. (Ginger Eckert)