The E-Sylum:  Volume 7, Number 1, January 4, 2004, Article 22

STATE QUARTER QUAGMIRE

The December 29, 2003 issue of The Wall Street Journal
featured a front-page article about the U.S. state quarter
series, highlighting the fractious bickering between states,
the mint and one another over choosing designs for the coins.

"These days, a growing number of two-bit battles are rattling
the sleepy U.S. Mint. The federal agency's commemorative
quarters program, a pocket-change salute to the 50 states,
has pitted politicians, tourism officials and artists against each
other in bruising battles. Launched in 1999 as a benign patriotic
gambit to revive coin-collecting, it's instead spurring peevish
spats over custody of American icons and how states define
themselves."

"The commemorative quarters program "wasn't supposed to be
contentious, but it's been nothing but one contretemps after
another," says David Ganz, a New York lawyer and coin
collector who has written a book about the program."

"The most recent controversy: The Iowa quarter, due out next
summer. The Iowa Quarter Commission wanted the famously
stony-faced husband-and-wife farmers from Grant Wood's
painting "American Gothic." A foundation that protects artists'
copyrights nixed that. An alternate plan to depict the Sullivan
brothers, five Iowa servicemen who died together in World
War II, gained favor. But the U.S. Mint bans head-and-
shoulder busts on quarters (no competing with George
Washington). Finally, Iowans settled on an engraving based
on a lesser-known Grant Wood painting, "Arbor Day." Then
neighboring Nebraska, home of the Arbor Day Foundation,
cried thief.

"That's so typical of Iowa," says Darcy Beck, an Omaha, Neb.,
coin collector who wonders why Iowa didn't just "claim the
Statue of Liberty while they're at it."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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