More Americana

We are on our way to New Mexico to visit the Georgia O’Keeffe  museum and her home at Abiquiu. We stopped in Columbia, Missouri last night, home of the University of Missouri, the first state university west of the Mississippi. The traditional symbol of the school are six Ionic columns which upheld the portico of Academic Hall, the initial building on the campus. Built in the early 1840s, it burned down in 1892. However the columns were preserved. 

Near Columbia, is Fulton, MO, home to Westminster College and America’s National Churchill Museum. Who knew it even existed? The reason it is there is because Churchill made his Sinews of Peace speech at the school on March 5, 1946. It is when he notoriously said “an iron curtain has descended,” essentially the start of the Cold War. As interesting is the fact that the museum is housed in the lower level of the church of St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury. The church was built in London after the fire of 1666 by Christopher Wren but was greatly damaged by bombing in 1940. The remaining materials were moved to Westminster College in 1966 and restored as the memorial to Churchill. 

An art installation nearby called Breakthrough consists of 8 panels from the Berlin Wall. It was dedicated by Ronald Reagan on November 9, 1990, exactly one year after the fall of the wall. 

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