Opportunity: Up to $600k to create national hero statues
The application window is open…
If you’re a maker, you can apply for up to $600,000 to create life-sized statues of great individuals from America’s past for President Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes.
The National Garden of American Heroes is a project announced at the end of Trump’s first term that’s supposed to open in July 2026 in celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Where it is?
That part hasn’t been shared.
But when the president first announced the project, he said it would be a “vast outdoor park” that will “fix in the soil of a single place what Abraham Lincoln called ‘[t]he mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart.”
What heroes will be included?
“Each individual has been chosen for embodying the American spirit of daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love. Astounding the world by the sheer power of their example, each one of them has contributed indispensably to America’s noble history, the best chapters of which are still to come.” ~Executive Order 13978
Trump’s initial order lists nearly 250 names including a wide range of individuals from distant history through modern day including:
-
- Ansel Adams
- Muhammad Ali
- Crispus Attucks
- Humphrey Bogart
- Daniel Boone
- Sitting Bull
- Gordon Chung-Hoon
- William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody
- Miles Davis
- Walt Disney
- Steve Jobs
- Amelia Earhart
- Thomas Edison
- Albert Einstein
- Ulysses S. Grant
- Whitney Houston
- Coretta Scott King
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Ronald Reagan
- Walter Reed
- Sacagawea
- Ruth Bader Ginsberg
Here’s the full list (Sec. 3).
For those applying
In addition to being life-sized, all statues must be made of marble, granite, bronze, copper, or brass.

AD
Applicants are asked to select 10 – 20 historical figures they’re interested in crafting. Each applicant can be approved for up to three statues funded up to $200,000 each.
The National Endowment for the Humanities will determine which applicant gets to create each figure.
The application window opened on April 24 and will close on Jul 1, 2025. Grant recipients are expected to be notified on September 25, 2025.
Here are instructions to apply.