President Donald Trump has continued populating the White House Rose Garden with statues of his preferred predecessors, with the latest addition being a bronze of the third US President, Thomas Jefferson.
Created by Colorado-based artist George Lundeen, the sculpture shows the founding father seated on a bench, holding a quill and the Declaration of Independence on his lap. Jefferson gazes into the distance, appearing to pause in thought as he authors the historic document.
The Jefferson work is the fifth sculpture to be placed in Trump’s Rose Garden, which already features George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and “Freedom’s Charge” — a statue of two Revolutionary War soldiers.
In a statement to Hyperallergic, Lundeen said he finished the statue 25 years ago. “Without Thomas Jefferson, you have to wonder whether there would be a United States of America,” he said.
Lundeen also collaborated on a statue of the president wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and thrusting a fist into the air, a pose intended to reflect Trump’s reaction immediately after the 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. That sculpture is now at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Installing the Jefferson statue is among Trump’s latest attempts to alter the White House grounds and Washington, DC, more broadly. Since renovations to the Rose Garden began in 2020, he has replaced the Kennedy-Era Lawn with a Mar-a-Lago-style patio and created a “Presidential Walk of Fame” featuring portraits of every US president except Joe Biden, who was mockingly substituted with an autopen device.
Trump’s design ambitions have also reached other parts of the capital. In June, six Washington, DC-based heritage preservation groups sued the Trump administration over plans for a “Garden of American Heroes” in West Potomac Park. The proposed garden is to include 250 American heroes, ranging from Muhammad Ali and Frederick Douglass to controversial figures such as Christopher Columbus, whose likeness appeared earlier in the White House compound in March.
