A Monument to New Jersey?

Imaginations Are Born to Run

Jersey City

NOW that New Jersey has settled on its thrilling new slogan ("New Jersey: Come See for Yourself," in case you've forgotten), it's time for serious state business. Let the search for the official state monument begin.

O.K., maybe it's not exactly official, but rather a somewhat fanciful call for submissions for an art show in Jersey City. And maybe after last year's Weird New Jersey art show, this year's slogan contest, Zach Braff's film "Garden State" and the triumphant return of Tony, Carmela, Junior and the rest last Sunday, the deconstruction of New Jersey is getting out of hand.

But that's just the point. Somehow, the search for the metaphysical core of New Jersey has become American culture's holy grail. Calling Dan Brown. What's the secret of Da Jersey Code? Beats me, but still they try.

So now comes "Monumental: Imaginary Monuments to New Jersey," an exhibition of drawings, site plans and mock-ups co-sponsored by the Jersey City Museum and Victory Hall, a cultural center and gallery housed in what was once a grand old Elks lodge. It is scheduled to open March 25 and run through April 23.

The idea is more to imagine the monuments than to build them. Given some of the costs, that might be wise. Robert Kosinski, for example, estimates that it would cost $5.4 million to construct his "Garden State," which would take the form of 17,000 junked cars shaped like colonies of the state flower, the common violet, and arrayed at discrete intervals, about five to a mile, along the entire 173 miles of the Garden State Parkway.

Some expected themes emerge. There is the ethically challenged political culture, celebrated in Keungsuk Sexton's proposal for stylishly retro-looking "Welcome to New Jersey — America's Pay-to-Play Land!" billboards at entries to the state's borders.

There are nods to New Jersey cultural heroes, exemplified in "The Jersey Rocks Triumphal Arch," proposed by Joe Heaps Nelson. It envisions a 227-foot-high arch built of Cor-Ten steel (which immediately rusts a bright orange that turns black from the air pollution) straddling the six lanes of traffic emerging from the Holland Tunnel. At its base are classical statues of Jon Bon Jovi and someone called Dave Wyndorf of the metal band Monster Magnet. No word on whether Springsteen fans get to file an appeal.

The car and highway motif, of course, is everywhere, most memorably in Michael Dal Cerro's "Spiral Highway Tower in Paramus," inspired by Pieter Bruegel, Fritz Lang, the Russian painter and architect Vladimir Tatlin and the intersection of Route 17 and Route 4 in Paramus.

"Spiral Highway Tower in Paramus" by Michael Dal Cerro.

Like a gridlocked, global-warming Tower of Babel, it calls for a 200-foot-tall spiraling tollway built of reinforced concrete columns, linked by reinforced concrete beams, supporting the reinforced concrete pavement. Computerized sensing devices will help move drivers along until they reach the top and fly off blissfully into space.

For good measure there's also a "Tower of Jersey," like Babel in reverse, beginning with the state's jumble of languages and cultures and growing organically as a representation of the state's "messy decadence."

There are, to be sure, less jaundiced takes, like Wendy Lewis's "Solar Garden State of Mind," a solar greenhouse in the form of a diner, or John deSoto's "Beacons of Freedom," which would provide laser displays and holographic displays along the Jersey Shore at Sandy Hook.

But the most common theme is the environment, the Garden State that usually isn't, like Pat Brentano's proposal to reinstall woods at the airports, bridges and tunnels, or Scott Sjobakken's proposal to erect a giant Hollywood-style sign reading "Chromium 6," a potent pollutant, across the Jersey City waterfront.

So what does this tell us about the lure of the Jersey myth? What's the secret of Da Jersey Code? Here's my take. New Jersey is America at its most vulnerable, most human, least heroic, least easily definable. It's the rest of us — old gangsters, old cities, old rockers, old suburbs, new suburbs, too much traffic, too much pollution, too many crooks. It's Abbott and Costello and Philip Roth, Frank Sinatra and Ice-T, Allen Ginsberg and Aaron Burr. Sometimes it seems like a rocky romance that's seen better days, but at its best, and in its dreams, it's still the Garden State.

But what do I know? So here's my proposed monument, the New Jersey Hall of Metaphors: the Springsteen Darkness at the Edge of Town Pavilion, the Turnpike Thrill Ride, the Sopranos Family Values Institute, the Boardwalk of Broken Dreams, the McMansion Death Trap, the Yogi (and Sinatra) Meditation Room. On and on. Dave Van Ronk's old "Garden State Stomp," with lyrics nothing but Jersey place names, plays when you walk in. "Born to Run," when you walk out.

Oh, and the slogan. Yes, it's a little late, but here's my choice: "New Jersey: Goombahs, Kierkegaard and You. Perfect Together."

E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com