In honor of the Tiny Monuments project, I found a great New Yorker article that includes interviews with several members of the Monument Lab, which is based out of Penn. The article discusses monuments in America and the figures they commemorate. In a lot of these cases, these are confederate soldiers or figures like Columbus who Americans idolize without realizing the disastrous impacts these figures have had on historically marginalized communities. When discussing why people tend to defend these monuments, the article profoundly states:
“What they’re defending, though, isn’t just a specific figure or cause from the past. They’re also defending an idea about history—who makes it, who gets to shape its narrative arc, and whether a nation’s story is finished or a work in progress.”
The article describes how the Monument Project responds to this problem by constructing monuments that the community wants. When asking Philadelphians what they wanted to see, one person responded
“People were suggesting, ‘Tear down the statues. . . . but what I need is a police budget that’s half what it is.’ ‘What we need is health care, what we need are protections to voting rights.’ ‘What I actually need is a living wage for all. That’s my monument. That’s what I would propose.’ ”
Overall I found it interesting to read about monuments, what they represent, and the commentary they provide on problems in the US.
1 Comment
Justine Seo · December 8, 2020 at 4:39 am
Hi Nicole, we read this article for my Art History class! I remember thinking it was really interesting, as we were discussing it while we were learning about when Americans first started using sculpture to commemorate their leaders and events that occurred and how the meaning of both those statues and the idea of making a statue to commemorate something in the first place has evolved over time. I found the comment about “forgetting about statues” so interesting and legitimate — I think it really goes in line with what the author said about the notion of even having monuments in the first place to be a Eurocentric ideal that would not help build our communities as much as actually investing in the communities themselves.
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