When the U.S. Mint launched its 50 States Quarters series in 1999, it seemed to have something irresistible: Give each state its own quarter, and have a local artist come up with a design for the "tails" side reflecting that state's history.
Three years into the program, Mint spokesman Michael White declares it a success, noting that an estimated 139 million Americans collect the commemorative quarters. "This is teaching history through coinage," White said. "A lot of kids, for instance, can learn about the heritage of their state."
But, according to Paul Jackson, children and others may well be learning it wrong.
Jackson, an award-winning painter known in Missouri as a steward of the state's heritage, says that the way the federal government chooses the state quarter designs causes historical inaccuracies and is void of honesty.
"The U.S. Mint is perpetrating out-and-out fraud in this program," he says. "They're lying to artists, to kids and to the American people."
Jackson drove east this week to voice his outrage, staging a variety of impish stunts, including rolling a 4-foot-high quarter down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, in hopes of triggering a Congressional investigation of the Mint program. He stayed in Washington for two days, paying for everything with quarters, visited the Inner Harbor for an evening, then left for Philadelphia and New York.
The Mint program allows each state to choose its own way of developing a design for its quarter. In Missouri, Gov. Bob Holden's office chose to sponsor a statewide contest and anyone, including schoolchildren, could enter. More than 3,300 people did, including about 2,500 children and Jackson, 34, a Columbia, Mo., resident.
Jackson's entry, subtle in its shadings, places the western explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in a canoe before the St. Louis Arch, unofficially known as "Gateway to the West." "I wanted to honor Missouri's riverways and its spirit of exploration," says Jackson, a native of Mississippi who has lived in his adopted state for nearly half his life.
The governor's office then had the Missouri Arts Commission choose 24 designs. The state placed all the images online so interested Missourians could vote on them.
More than 180,000 people voted - 80,000 for Jackson's work. The design was among five sent to the Mint for approval.
According to rules posted on its Web site, the Mint would accept, revise or reject between three and five designs from each state, based on "coinability" and "historical accuracy." Two independent federal agencies, the Commission on Fine Arts (CFA) and the Citizens' Commemorative Coin Advisory Committee (CCCAC), would weigh in heavily.
To Jackson's shock, the Mint rejected his design.
"That was our first evidence that something was wrong," he says. "It launched this 5 1/2 -month investigation we're on. [Mint spokesmen] lie and contradict themselves so often I had to start taping my phone conversations" with them. "That's legal in Missouri. But they didn't like it much."
White, the Mint spokesman, says he regrets any confusion the program may have caused.
In fact, the workings of the Mint are shadowy. Only Jackson's mulishness has shown, for instance, that the CFA and CCCAC never see the original designs submitted by the states. Instead, the Mint's engravers adapt every design first, then send it over for review.
"We've asked the Mint time and time again to send us the originals," says Jim Atherton, a CFA official. "They never do. I don't know why. Here we ask American citizens to invest time, energy and artistic talent, without pay, to create these works, and the Mint takes substantial liberties interpreting them." Atherton never saw Jackson's original design until it appeared in yesterday's Washington Post.
"In my opinion," Atherton says, "that's extremely dishonest. These artists have every right to be mad as hell."
Jackson is, and he's not the only one. The way Mint engravers "translated" his work for a model, he says, "was sabotage. It's 300 percent different from the original. Common sense tells you that. It looks like an Easter basket with the Arch for a handle. If I'd seen that design, I'd have ruled it out too."
Needs to be 'coinable'
Mint spokesmen White and Doug Hecox say their bureau altered Jackson's image because of historical inaccuracies and elements that weren't "coinable" on a mass scale.
Placing Lewis and Clark, who set forth from Missouri in 1804, with the Arch, completed in 1966, was anachronistic, they say. In addition, the Mint plans to create a commemorative dollar featuring Lewis and Clark in 2004 and wants to avoid confusion with the Missouri quarter.
Jackson, a man as puckish as he is serious, finds each objection laughable. His Web site, www.pauljackson.com, lists 10 errors the Mint's version introduces, among them a Lewis and Clark boat with three sails, field glasses that weren't available in 1804, too many men in the boat (12 instead of two) and the direction of the crew - east, not west. "They didn't even spell Bicentennial right," he says.
Further, he asks, if historical accuracy matters, why does Ohio's state quarter show both the Wright Brothers' airplane and an astronaut?
He also notes that the Lewis and Clark commemorative dollar hasn't been designed yet, and that 23 private mints have said his original design would be easy to mass produce.
Jackson, who is proud of his innate marketing skills, says his ego is no way at stake. The issue is whether the government lives up to its word. "They knew Missouri chose to run a contest. They didn't object. Missourians, including thousands of schoolkids, entered in good faith. And Missourians aren't getting the coin they wanted."
The Mint expects local artists to be flattered to be involved, Jackson says. Instead, they're victimized. "We're reduced to doing their legwork and their research for them," he says, adding that the Mint's engraver alone gets his or her initials on the final coin.
White, the Mint spokesman, notes that every entrant in the quarters program signs away the rights to his or her design or image.
Jackson acknowledges that point but says artistic integrity must be defended.
Other problems
Indeed, Missouri is not the only state to have problems with the design of its quarter.
Maine's winning image shows a lighthouse - based on the Pemaquid Point Light, which stands on a low, rocky shoreline - and a three-masted ship, Victory Chimes, which sails out of Rockland. The Mint's version puts the lighthouse on a high, rocky cliff - a setting that doesn't exist - and, according to Coin World magazine, Maine sailors say the Mint's ship, with only two masts, is a dead ringer for The Pride of Baltimore II, moored in our own Inner Harbor.
In Ohio, the coin's motto was changed without explanation, and newspaper editorials questioned the process. In Maryland, the designation "Old Line State" struck some as obscure.
According to Jackson, both Nebraska and Iowa are watching his case closely.
His goal of speaking for the voiceless leaves room for humor. He crafted a 4-foot-high quarter bearing his design and spent a day rolling it past various buildings in Washington, including the Mint and the White House.
He and his "chief of staff," Scott Miller, brought only quarters with them on their trip - each affixed with a plastic sticker of the Jackson design - and paid for everything, from lodging to souvenirs, with the fully legal 25-cent coins.
In Missouri, more than 35,000 people are on Jackson's e-mail list, keeping up with his progress. "I can't tell you how many of them asked me, 'How can you let them do that to you?'" he says. He has funded the protest trip himself.
If publicity was his aim, he has succeeded. In Washington alone, National Public Radio, CBS and The Washington Post aired his complaints. People magazine and other publications await. But in this day of sound-bite journalism, few have gotten it quite right.
"People want me to say it's about me," he says. "They want me to say I'm mad my design didn't get chosen. But it's already been eliminated. I'm still here.
"Look, I know the government has more important issues than this going on," he says. "If anything related to Sept. 11 happened, I'd probably give this up. But we should at least be able to expect our government not to lie to us. Honesty is not a two-bit value.
"I guess they didn't reckon on any of us having a voice," says Jackson. "But I do, and I'm not going away. You're talking to one tenacious artist."