D.C.’s IndyCar race will zoom past museums. Some worry it could harm the art inside

When 180-mph Engines Meet Centuries-Old Art: The Freedom 250 Grand Prix and the Question No One Fully Answered

Ecorescuezone.com – This weekend, the National Mall — a stretch of open ground that has hosted presidential inaugurations, civil-rights marches, and quiet afternoons of families feeding ducks — will become a 1.7-mile, irregularly shaped racetrack. More than two dozen IndyCar drivers will complete 147 laps of what organizers call the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, a two-day spectacle built to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary. The headline event, a 250-mile sprint scheduled for Sunday afternoon, will see cars tearing around the course at speeds approaching 180 mph, a figure that dwarfs the roughly 25-mph pace at which vehicles normally navigate the Mall’s perimeter roads.

The celebration is not without controversy. The track’s layout threads directly past several of the capital’s most significant cultural repositories: the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives Building, and two Smithsonian institutions — the National Air and Space Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum. For the people who steward those collections, the proximity of high-performance combustion engines raises a question that has lingered since the event was announced: will sustained vibration from the passing cars compromise the structural integrity of the buildings or the physical condition of the artworks and artifacts housed within?

The Museums’ Own Response

The National Gallery of Art, whose outdoor sculpture garden sits directly alongside the racing line, has taken visible precautions. Several works in the garden have been boarded up ahead of the event. Spokesperson Chris Abanavas confirmed in writing that the institution “conducted an extensive vibration study and based on the results we have implemented a set of measures to ensure the safety of our staff, visitors, collection, and facilities during the race.”

The National Archives and Records Administration and the Smithsonian Institution, however, did not respond to inquiries about their own preparation steps or internal concerns. Their silence has done little to quiet the unease among preservation advocates.

Organizers Cite a Track Record

The event is jointly organized by the White House and IndyCar, the open-wheel series owned by Penske Entertainment Corp. Both parties insist that every relevant protocol has been followed and that no damage to surrounding structures is anticipated.

“The White House and Penske have followed all appropriate protocols and been in close coordination with all relevant agencies to ensure this is also the safest and most secure race for all visitors to enjoy,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle stated in a written response.

IndyCar officials point to precedents in other cities where open-wheel racing has passed close to culturally sensitive sites. A race in Detroit’s historic Belle Isle Park and another that runs directly past the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, are frequently cited. Beth Bell, chief marketing officer of The Dalí Museum, noted that the building was engineered to withstand a Category 5 hurricane and has “remained safe and secure throughout the event’s history.”

“With this excellent track record and the thorough preparation we have done for this event, working closely with all the appropriate local and federal agencies, we do not anticipate any impact on the structures surrounding the circuit as a result of the race,” IndyCar spokesperson Alex Damron said in a statement.

Why the Mall Is Different, Critics Argue

Preservation advocates push back on the comparison. The National Mall has never hosted a motorized race of this scale. The closest historical parallel, they note, is the centuries-old tradition of horse racing on the Mall, a pastime favored by early presidents. Moreover, organizers had less than a year from announcement to execution — a compressed timeline that, critics say, left little room for the kind of long-duration structural monitoring that would meaningfully distinguish a one-time vibration event from cumulative fatigue.

Mary Okin, an art historian and assistant director at Living New Deal, an organization dedicated to documenting New Deal-era public art and infrastructure, has been among the most vocal voices raising alarms. She is a longtime champion of one particular landmark along the proposed route: the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, formerly the Social Security Administration Building, a protected historic site valued both for its architectural design and for the murals painted inside its walls.

“For several hours of racing cars, we might be risking … the access to these extraordinary works for future generations,” Okin said.

In a letter sent to the National Park Service in late July — the agency that issued the event’s permits — Okin outlined concerns spanning course-construction vibrations, race-day vibrations, and worst-case scenarios including fires or flying debris. More broadly, she argued that the planning and permitting process failed to adequately interrogate the vibration question or prepare contingency measures for the possibility of harm.

“The fact that there is an insistence that it has to go by and around major collections of art — whether or not those collections get damaged — is absolutely ridiculous and foolish and indicates a lack of care about the things that belong to the American people,” Okin said.

A Broader Pattern of Tension

Okin situates the race within what she describes as a wider pattern: a federal administration that, in pursuit of anniversary spectacles and large-scale construction projects, has shown a willingness to sideline historic-preservation review while simultaneously moving to weaken the statutory protections that guard historic sites across the country. The question she poses is not merely whether this particular weekend will cause measurable harm to a mural or a sculpture. It is whether the institutional machinery designed to ask that question was given a genuine opportunity to do so before the green light was given.

The White House, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Transportation, and the National Park Service did not respond to follow-up questions about safety protocols or the permitting process. As the engines warm up on the Mall this weekend, the answer to whether the art survives intact will be known only after the final lap — and, in some cases, perhaps only after years of slow structural inspection.