PUBLIC ART REVIEW | VOL. 29 | ISSUE 57 | FORECASTPUBLICART.ORG
MONUM CHANGES New thinking about historical monuments is embracing inclusivity—and ambiguity BY JON SPAYDE
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public places was set off by Dylann Roof’s terroristic murder of black churchgoers in June 2015, and controversy hit fever pitch in August 2017, when white supremacists marched in Charlottesville to protest the city’s plan to remove Confederate monuments. Other monuments have been challenged, including a statue of Christopher Columbus in New York and one of Philadelphia’s former mayor Frank Rizzo (widely resented in the black and gay communities)—while cities ponder renaming streets and other facilities bearing the names of slaveowners or racists. Behind the headlines are wider questions: Who gets commemorated? Who decides? Who’s been left out? Should the materials and forms of monuments somehow show that historical perspectives are multiple and shift with time? “We’re increasingly aware that monuments and memorials have a lot of power; they are significant forces that shape and direct ideas about, you name it, race, class, geography, region, history,” says Erika Doss, professor of American studies at Notre Dame and author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. “I think we’ve always known that, but now there’s so much press being given to them—and it’s a different kind of press. One hundred fifty years ago there were lots of articles in the papers about new monuments: here’s one to Lincoln, here’s one to Washington. But what wasn’t in that press coverage was, here’s how people feel about that.” Today, says Doss, public response is an integral part of the stories that are told about monuments, memorials, and public commemoration generally. The most ambitious recent result of this shift is probably the Monument Lab project—the brainchild of a Canadian’s encounter with Philadelphia.
Dedicated in 1884, the Robert E. Lee statue stood atop a tall column at the center of Lee Circle in New Orleans for 133 years. Here, workers secure straps prior to its removal on May 19, 2017. It was the last of four Confederate-era figures removed from the city.
Photo by Infrogmation of New Orleans / Wikimedia / Creative Commons.
IN AMERICA, MONUMENTS HAVE BEEN COMING DOWN. A movement to remove Confederate statues from
