America's Promise

Works in Jan’s Totems series present icons, objects, and scenes as metaphors for reflection on current events and themes relevant to contemporary living.

America’s Promise is a metaphorical meditation on the state-of-affairs in what Alexis De Tocqueville called ‘The American Experiment,’ and asks a difficult question.

Following late-nineteenth-century infrastructure-development and favorable market position owing to its vast natural resources, access to capital, investment in infrastructure, open orientation relative to immigration and to welcoming some of the world’s brightest minds, its native and imported talent and industrial innovation, its foreign and domestic investment, its secure geographic position relative to the chaos and destruction of two ‘World Wars’ in Europe, America emerged onto the world scene in the mid-twentieth-century with a swashbuckling ‘American Way,’ a Marshall Plan in Europe, the establishment of The United Nations in New York in 1945, and the developing economies of the rest of the world just beyond, with a burgeoning and capable economy, embarking on what has been called ‘The American Century.’

Since then, despite America’s leading example in many respects, as well as its contributions to global popular culture, it has at times struggled to maintain its position of moral authority, first in its ongoing (and presently urgently-at-the-fore) battles to cope with the original sins of slavery and manifest destiny, then in its involvement in foreign wars and ‘empire-building,’ and finally, with the increasing divergence of ‘haves’ from ‘have-nots’ in its domestic economy.

The question this sculpture asks is this: is ‘The American Century,’ of American moral and market leadership, being eclipsed by an era of American decline, or will it return to that ‘sweet spot’ on the world stage?