Tucked away in a corner of the Ellipse in front of the White House is the Boy Scout Memorial. It shows three figures -- a Scout in full uniform, flanked by a semi-nude man and woman in flowing robes. The following excerpt from The Washington Post's Answer Man column tells the story:
We will just say that this is one of the problems you can encounter when you mingle the classical and the modern, the symbolic and the concrete. That's not mom and dad in the memorial, that's American "manhood" and American "womanhood," symbolizing what The Washington Post described at the memorial's dedication in 1964 as "the great ideals of the past."
Sculptor Donald DeLue decided to make those two figures look sorta Greeky, with skimpy, flowing garments. The effect in undercut by the Boy Scout in the middle, dressed in his neckerchief and tightly laced hiking boots.
The statue was paid for with dimes collected by scouts across the nation and was erected near the White House on the site of the first National Boy Scout Jamboree (held in 1937). Wrote art historian James M. Goode in his indispensable "The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C.": "There is both an incongruous clashing between the scale of the figures and a questionable mixture of contemporary and Neoclassical details."
It does send a subtle message, though: Be prepared -- and bring a change of clothing.