Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy 9781501356940, 9781501356919, 9781501356926

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction to Teachable Monuments: Why Monuments Matter Sierra Rooney and Jennifer Wingate
Part I: Teaching Strategies
1 Developing Essential Questions for a Student-Driven Fourth Grade Monument Study Adelaide Wainwright
2 Encouraging Intervention: Project-Based Learning with Problematic Public Monuments Mya Dosch
3 Mapping Art on Campus Annie Dell’Aria
4 Moving beyond “Pale and Male”: A Museum Educator’s Approach to the Campus Portrait Debate Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye
5 “From Commemoration to Education”: Re-Setting Context and Interpretation for a Confederate Memorial Statue on a University Campus Sarah Sonner
6 Making Material Histories: Institutional Memory and Multivocal Interpretation Kailani Polzak
Part II: Political Strategies
7 Dismantling the Confederate Landscape: The Case for a New Context Sarah Beetham
8 Learning from Louisville: John Breckenridge Castleman, His Statue, and a Public Sphere Revisited Chris Reitz
9 Addressing Monumental Controversies in New York City Post Charlottesville Harriet F. Senie
10 The Preservation Dilemma: Confronting Two Controversial Monuments in the United States Capitol Michele Cohen
11 Up against the Wall: Commemorating and Framing the Vietnam War on the National Mall Jennifer K. Favorite
12 “I Feel Like I Have Hated Lincoln for 110 Years”: Debates over the Lincoln Statue in Richmond, Virginia Evie Terrono
Part III: Engagement Strategies
13 Paper Monuments as Public Pedagogy Sue Mobley
14 Charging Bull and Fearless Girl: A Dialogue Charlene G. Garfinkle
15 The Afterlife of E Pluribus Unum Laura M. Holzman, Modupe Labode, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid
16 Unforeseen Controversy: Reconciliation and Re-Contextualization of Wartime Atrocities through “Comfort Women” Memorials in the United States Jung-Sil Lee
17 Free History Lessons: Contextualizing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina Matthew Champagne, Katie Schinabeck, and Sarah A. M. Soleim
18 Future History: New Monumentality in Old Public Spaces An Interview with Artist Kenseth Armstead by María F. Carrascal
Index

Citation preview

Teachable Monuments

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Teachable Monuments Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy Edited by Sierra Rooney, Jennifer Wingate and Harriet F. Senie

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2021 This paperback edition published 2023 Selection and editorial matter © Sierra Rooney, Jennifer Wingate and Harriet F. Senie, 2023 Individual chapters © their authors, 2023 Sierra Rooney, Jennifer Wingate and Harriet F. Senie have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Toby Way Cover image: Christopher Columbus statue in Boston’s North End, after being decapitated by protestors on June 10, 2020 © Tim Bradbury / Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rooney, Sierra, editor. | Wingate, Jennifer (Writer on art), editor. | Senie, Harriet. Title: Teachable monuments : using public art to spark dialogue and confront controversy / edited by Sierra Rooney and Jennifer Wingate ; with Harriet F. Senie. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Visual Arts, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039526 (print) | LCCN 2020039527 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501356940 (hardback) | ISBN 9781501356933 (epub) | ISBN 9781501356926 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Monuments–United States–Public opinion. | Public art–United States–Themes, motives. | Prejudices–United States. | Art and society–United States. | Cultural awareness–Study and teaching–United States. Classification: LCC E159 .T238 2021 (print) | LCC E159 (ebook) | DDC 700.973–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039526 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039527 ISBN:

HB: 978-1-5013-5694-0 PB: 979-8-7651-0046-2 ePDF: 978-1-5013-5692-6 eBook: 978-1-5013-5693-3

Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For all of our teachers

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Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Acknowledgments Introduction to Teachable Monuments: Why Monuments Matter Sierra Rooney and Jennifer Wingate Part I:  Teaching Strategies 1 Developing Essential Questions for a Student-Driven Fourth Grade Monument Study  Adelaide Wainwright 2 Encouraging Intervention: Project-Based Learning with Problematic Public Monuments  Mya Dosch 3 Mapping Art on Campus  Annie Dell’Aria 4 Moving beyond “Pale and Male”: A Museum Educator’s Approach to the Campus Portrait Debate  Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye 5 “From Commemoration to Education”: Re-Setting Context and Interpretation for a Confederate Memorial Statue on a University Campus  Sarah Sonner 6 Making Material Histories: Institutional Memory and Multivocal Interpretation  Kailani Polzak Part II:  Political Strategies 7 Dismantling the Confederate Landscape: The Case for a New Context  Sarah Beetham 8 Learning from Louisville: John Breckenridge Castleman, His Statue, and a Public Sphere Revisited  Chris Reitz 9 Addressing Monumental Controversies in New York City Post Charlottesville  Harriet F. Senie 10 The Preservation Dilemma: Confronting Two Controversial Monuments in the United States Capitol  Michele Cohen 11 Up against the Wall: Commemorating and Framing the Vietnam War on the National Mall  Jennifer K. Favorite

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12 “I Feel Like I Have Hated Lincoln for 110 Years”: Debates over the Lincoln Statue in Richmond, Virginia  Evie Terrono Part III:  Engagement Strategies 13 Paper Monuments as Public Pedagogy  Sue Mobley 14 Charging Bull and Fearless Girl: A Dialogue  Charlene G. Garfinkle 15 The Afterlife of E Pluribus Unum  Laura M. Holzman, Modupe Labode, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid 16 Unforeseen Controversy: Reconciliation and Re-Contextualization of Wartime Atrocities through “Comfort Women” Memorials in the United States  Jung-Sil Lee 17 Free History Lessons: Contextualizing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina  Matthew Champagne, Katie Schinabeck, and Sarah A. M. Soleim 18 Future History: New Monumentality in Old Public Spaces  An Interview with Artist Kenseth Armstead by María F. Carrascal

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223 237 251

Index265

Illustrations 0.1 Robert E. Lee Monument, with protesters, Richmond, Virginia, June 2020. 1.1 John Quincy Adams Ward, Henry Ward Beecher, 1891. 2.1 Raúl Álvarez Garín (coordination), Arnulfo Aquino (design), and Salvador Pizarro (carving), Stela of Tlatelolco, 1993. 2.2 Ximena Labra, Tlatelolco 1968/2008, 2008, intervention in the Zócalo, Mexico City. 2.3 Ximena Labra, Tlatelolco 1968/2008, 2008, intervention in front of Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. 3.1 Ursula von Rydingsvaard, Heart in Hand, 2014. 3.2 Students with Mark di Suvero, For Kepler, 1995. 4.1 Unknown artist, eighteenth century, Elihu Yale; William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an enslaved servant, c. 1708. 4.2 Natty Doilicho and David Nam, Waypoint, 2019. 5.1 Installation view of From Commemoration to Education exhibit, looking back toward the entrance to the hall gallery and the Briscoe Center’s main entrance, 2017. 6.1 Display boxes from the exhibition “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi, and Material Histories in the Making at the Williams College Museum of Art, 2018. 6.2 The Hawaiʻi archive gallery in the “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi, and Material Histories in the Making exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art, 2018. 7.1 T. Markwalter (architect), Antonio Fontana (carving), and VanGunder and Young (design), Richmond County Confederate Monument, Augusta, Georgia, dedicated in 1878. 7.2 Demopolis Confederate Monument, Demopolis, Alabama, originally dedicated in 1910, damaged in car accident 2016, reconstructed in 2018. 8.1 Hinton Perry, John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville, Kentucky, 1913.

2 23 32 35 36 45 47

54 58

64

76

78

89 95 102

x 8.2 10.1

10.2 10.3 12.1 13.1 13.2 14.1 14.2 14.3 15.1 15.2 16.1 16.2 16.3 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 18.1

Illustrations Hinton Perry, John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville, Kentucky, 1913, vandalized in 2018. Photographs of the sculptures in situ, taken before 1920. Left: Discovery of America, marble by Luigi Persico, 1836–44. Right: Rescue, marble by Horatio Greenough, 1836–53. The figure of Columbus from Discovery is supported on padded blocks in storage. Rescue in storage. David Frech, Abraham Lincoln and His Son Tad, Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia, 2003. One “hall” of the Canal Street Galleries, New Orleans, 2018. High school students fill out public proposal forms at the bus station, New Orleans, 2018. Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, Bowling Green Park, New York City, 1989. Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl, 2017. Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl with public in a mimicking pose. Digital rendering of Fred Wilson, E Pluribus Unum, (proposed sculpture) 2010. View of Bernard Williams, Talking Wall, with Indianapolis skyline in background, 2015. The first “Comfort Women” Memorial, Palisade Park Public Library, New Jersey, 2010. Seo-kyung Kim and Eun-sung Kim, Statue of Peace, Glendale, California, 2013. Steven Whyte, Women’s Column of Strength, St. Mary’s Square Annex, San Francisco, California, 2017. Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, 2017. Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the North Carolina State Capitol obelisk, 2017. Silent Sentinels protesting at the White House, 1917. Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, 2017. Kenseth Armstead, Washington 20/20/20, Union Square, New York, 2018.

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132 133 133 158 182 185 195 196 197 210 217 225 227 231 239 240 242 246 252

Illustrations 18.2 Kenseth Armstead, detail view, Washington 20/20/20, Union Square, New York, 2018. 18.3 Kenseth Armstead, Master Work: Astoria Houses, Building 24, 2016. 18.4 Kenseth Armstead, Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776, 2018.

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Contributors Kenseth Armstead is a conceptual artist. His works have been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berlin VideoFest, and the MIT List Visual Arts Center. His videos, drawings, and sculptures are included in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the African American Museum in Dallas, Texas, and numerous public and private collections. The New York Times, L Magazine, Art in America, The Village Voice, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post have favorably reviewed his videos, sculptures, and multimedia installations. Sarah Beetham is Chair of Liberal Arts and Assistant Professor of Art History at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, specializing in American art and particularly the monuments erected to citizen soldiers after the Civil War. Her current book project, “Monumental Crisis: Accident, Vandalism, and the Civil War Citizen Soldier”, considers the long history of damage and alteration of Civil War monuments in the context of the recent debate over Confederate memory. Dr. Beetham has published work in Public Art Dialogue, Panorama, Nierika, and Common-Place. She has been interviewed regarding her work in several outlets, including the Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report. María F. Carrascal is an architect and Assistant Professor of History, Theory and Architectural Composition at Universidad de Sevilla-US (Spain), specializing in the field of creative regeneration of contemporary cities and particularly in the role of art in the development of urban contexts. She coordinates the EMVISESA-US Chair on housing and new ways of living, and is a member of the research group PAIDI HUM-666 on Contemporary City, Architecture and Heritage and the UNESCO Chair on Built Urban Heritage CREhAR. Her office, ARTIPICA Creative Spaces, focuses on temporary architecture and design, regenerative art, scenography, and curatorship. Its work has been awarded distinctions by national and international institutions including the ICO Museum and Foundation, FAD Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, and the Architectural League of New York-Socrates Sculpture Park. She has been a visiting scholar at Cornell University, Municipal Art Society of New York, Columbia University, St. John’s University, Politecnico di Milano, Docomomo Netherlands-TU Delft, and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Matthew Champagne, Katie Schinabeck, and Sarah A. M. Soleim are all doctoral candidates in the public history program at North Carolina State University and founding members of Historians for a Better Future. Michele Cohen has served as Curator for the Architect of the Capitol since October 2015. She earned a PhD in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University

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of New York. She began her career as the Director of the Sculpture Inventory for the Public Design Commission of the City of New York. From 1989 to 2009, she served as the Founding Director of New York City’s Public Art for Public Schools program. Her publications include The Art Commission and Municipal Art Society Guide to Manhattan’s Outdoor Sculpture (1988) and Public Art for Public Schools (2009). Annie Dell’Aria is Associate Professor of Art History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Her research and teaching explore the intersections of public space, contemporary art, and moving image media. She is the author of The Moving Image as Public Art: Sidewalk Spectators and Modes of Enchantment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and her writings have also appeared in Afterimage, Public Art Dialogue, Moving Image Review and Art Journal (MIRAJ), International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Millennium Film Journal, and other venues. Mya Dosch  is Assistant Professor of Art of the Americas at California State University, Sacramento, where she teaches courses on Latin American art, race and representation, and public art in the Americas. She received the 2019 Association for Latin American Art Biennial Dissertation Award for “Creating 1968: Art, Architecture, and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement”. Her work appears in Future Anterior, Sculpture, and the forthcoming exhibition catalog No calles, manifieěstate about the artist collective Grupo Suma. Jennifer K. Favorite holds a PhD in Art History from The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY). Her dissertation, “Added Interpretive Centers at U.S. War Memorials and the Reinterpretation of National History,” establishes newly built didactic facilities at existing war memorials as an emerging twenty-first-century commemorative paradigm. Her work appears in Public Art Dialogue, and she has taught at Hunter College. She is a recipient of The Graduate Center Mall Fellowship and the CUNY Advanced Research Collaborative Knickerbocker Award for Archival Research in American Studies. Charlene G. Garfinkle is an independent scholar of American art. She publishes and lectures on nineteenth-century women artists in the United States and Europe working in a variety of media. She is a contributor to Women Building History: Public Art at the 1893 Columbian Exposition (2011) by Wanda Corn. A lecturer for the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, most recently she developed an upper-division course entitled Three-Dimensional Arts of the United States: Meaning, Context, Reception. Laura M. Holzman is Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Indiana University IUPUI, where she is also Director of the Museum Studies Program and Public Scholar of Curatorial Practices and Visual Art. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on topics such as public art, curatorial practice, museum history and theory, and urban visual culture. She regularly develops exhibitions and public programs in collaboration with students and community partners. She is the author of Contested Image: Defining Philadelphia for the Twenty-First Century (2019).

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Her writing has also been published in outlets such as Public Art Dialogue and Public: A Journal of Imagining America. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid is Professor of Anthropology and Museum Studies in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI, Chancellor’s Professor, Director of the Cultural Heritage Research Center, and the Director of Graduate Studies for the IUPUI Museum Studies Program. Her research focuses on landscape history and the production of public memory, particularly in the Chesapeake, the Midwest, and the California missions. Her book California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage (2016) is the winner of four national awards including the Society of Architectural Historians Elizabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award. She has been the recipient of an IUPUI Trustees Teaching Award, an AMM Professional Service Award, and an AAUP Publication Grant. Modupe Labode is a Curator at the National Museum of American History. From 2007 to 2019, she taught history and museum studies at IUPUI, and was a public scholar of African American History and Museums. Jung-Sil Lee is an art historian, curator, and adjunct professor at George Washington University and the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her PhD in Art History from the University of Maryland explored the significance of public memorials and their roles in reconciliation. She curated numerous art exhibitions including “comfort women”themed exhibitions which traveled to four cities (2017). For five years, she has served as the president of the non-profit organization Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues. She coedited Comfort Women: A Movement for Justice and Women’s Rights in the United States (2020), which overviews the past twenty-nine years of the “comfort women” redress movement. Sue Mobley is a New Orleans based urbanist, organizer, and advocate. She is currently Senior Research Scholar at Monument Lab, Visiting Scholar at the Center for Art and Space at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania, and Visiting Fellow for Arts and Culture at the American Planning Association, as well as a member of the New Orleans City Planning Commission. She has served as Director of Advocacy at Colloqate Design, Public Programs Manager at the Small Center for Collaborative Design at Tulane School of Architecture, and was Co-Director of Paper Monuments. She is the author of Human Rights, Human Wrongs: Observance of Human Rights Law and Norms in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations. Kailani Polzak is Assistant Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in European visual culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries particularly as it relates to histories of intercultural contact, race, natural history, and colonialism in the Pacific. Her recent publications also highlight the methodological questions raised by curating colonial histories of the Pacific from multiple perspectives. Polzak was formerly Assistant Professor of Art at Williams College where she co-curated “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi and Material Histories in the Making (2018).

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Chris Reitz is Gallery Director and Assistant Professor of Critical and Curatorial Studies at the University of Louisville, where he has worked since receiving his PhD from Princeton University in 2015. His most recent writing has appeared in October, The Baffler, Paper Monument, The White Review, N+1, and Texte zur Kunst, as well as in various exhibition catalogs. His recent exhibitions have included solo shows for Judy Chicago, Sislej Xhafa, Sanford Biggers, and the artist collective For Freedoms, as well as the group exhibitions “Painting in the Network: Algorithm and Appropriation” and “Conspiratorial Aesthetics.” He was formerly project manager at Public Art Fund in New York. Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye is the Curator of Education and Academic Outreach at the Yale Center for British Art. In this role, she facilitates a range of diverse conversations with Yale faculty, students, and community members around difficult topics including race, empire, and colonialism. Her latest research investigates the connections between pre-Columbian art and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a specific focus on casts of pre-Columbian objects. She is also the Curator of the exhibition, Small-Great Objects: Anni and Josef Albers in the Americas (2017) at the Yale University Art Gallery. She received her PhD in Art History from the University of Southern California. Harriet F. Senie is Professor of Art History at City College, CUNY; she also teaches at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 (2015); The “Tilted Arc” Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (2001); and Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy (1992). She is coeditor with Sally Webster of and contributor to Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy (1992; 1998) and coeditor with Cher Krause Knight of and contributor to the Companion to Public Art (2016), as well as Museums and Public Art? (2018). She cofounded Public Art Dialogue with Cher Krause Knight, an international organization and a College Art Association affiliate, and coedited the peer-review journal Public Art Dialogue from 2011 through spring 2017. Sarah Sonner is Associate Director for Curation at the Briscoe Center for American History, the University of Texas at Austin. Sarah joined the Briscoe Center in 2016 and oversees the curation and development of the center’s exhibit program and material culture collections. Previously, Sarah served as Curator for the National Endowment for the Humanities’ traveling exhibit program. Her experience in exhibit development includes roles in interpretation, research, and design coordination at museums such as the Brooklyn Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Sarah received her PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Evie Terrono is Professor of Art History at Randolph-Macon College. Her scholarship focuses on American Art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on American racial and gender politics and their impact on the formation of national identity through the visual arts, and the problematics of Confederate memory and commemoration. Recent publications are included in Civil War in Art and Memory (2016), Central to Their Lives: Southern Women Artists in the

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Johnson Collection (2018), and Public Art Dialogue (2018). Her current book project, “Art and Cultural Politics in Virginia, 1900-1950,” examines the impact of racial and gender politics on the cultural landscape in Virginia during a period of radical social transformations. Adelaide Wainwright is currently a fourth grade Teacher at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Oregon. She received her BA from Reed College and her M.S.Ed. from Bank Street College of Education. She continues to relish opportunities to engage her students in their world through their environment and experiences.

Acknowledgments Teachable Monuments has been a collective effort from its inception, and we have many colleagues to thank for their contributions, support, criticism, and conversations. First and foremost, we thank all the contributors to this volume for generously sharing their time and scholarship with us. An earlier manifestation of this project was spearheaded by Harriet F. Senie and Sierra Rooney who chaired a panel, “Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Address Controversies” at the College Art Association (CAA) annual conference in New York City in February 2018. The CAAaffiliated organization, Public Art Dialogue (PAD), sponsored the panel, and we are indebted to PAD and its board and members for sustaining the dialogue about public art and monuments. When Harriet F. Senie and Cher Krause Knight founded PAD in 2009, CAA did not regularly include scholarship about public art on its conference program, and there were few places where academics and artists could converse with administrators, curators, and other public art stakeholders. At the same time that we are grateful for the support and legitimation of public art scholarship that CAA has made possible, we are mindful that CAA represents only a narrow cross-section of the people who study, critique, and make public art. The conversation about monuments extends well beyond the art world and academe, and the dialogue will not be complete without including as many voices and perspectives as possible. Teachable Monuments debuted as a conference panel at CAA, but the conversations, collaborations, and scholarship that inspired the volume started before and extended beyond that 2018 panel. We are indebted to the work of numerous scholars, friends, and colleagues who are invested in confronting the challenges and rewards of studying and teaching monuments, including Renée Ater, La Tanya Autry, Sarah Beetham, Michele Bogart, Erika Doss, Paul Farber, Jennifer Favorite, Sheila Gerami, Patricia Eunji Kim, Cher Krause Knight, Marisa Lerer, Steve Locke, Ken Lum, Kirk Savage, Howard Skrill, Evie Terrono, Sara Weintraub, Amy Werbel, and many others. We also thank our colleagues and students at our respective institutions, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and St. Francis College for their inspiration, collegiality, and support. Finally, we are forever grateful for our families, including John Dean, and especially our partners, Dan Muse and Steven Dean, for their insights, encouragement, and steady company while we finished this volume under quarantine.

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Introduction to Teachable Monuments: Why Monuments Matter By Sierra Rooney and Jennifer Wingate

“How to Take Down a Monument” was the headline, set in bold white text on a red background, at the top of a graphic that began circulating on social media in June 2020.1 The instructions, detailed and specific, began with: “Key to pulling one down is letting gravity work 4 you.” The tone of the graphic was tongue-in-cheek, but the physical principles it outlined—safety precautions, weight distribution ratios, the benefits of rope vs. chain—offered a practical handbook for intrepid citizens. Created by the activist collective Decolonize This Place, the how-to guide was a response to the urgent nationwide drive to deface and topple monuments symbolizing oppression, racism, colonialism, and injustice. The impulse to destroy these monuments flowed from the eruption of anger and grief in the days after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Protesters flooded the streets of most American cities, calling out police forces for their violence against Black men and women. A multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational coalition of demonstrators marched in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Monuments, like the equestrian sculpture of Confederate General Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia (Figure 0.1), soon became rallying points for the protests. Within a period of days, hundreds of statues were spray painted, beheaded, set on fire, and thrown into lakes, as protesters strove to change the way histories are told in public places.2 In short order, a new moment of truth came for the nation’s monuments, and the incendiary symbolism of white supremacy that many of them represent. While many activists bypassed official channels altogether and dismantled monuments themselves, government officials in Philadelphia, Birmingham, Athens, Georgia, and Richmond, Virginia (among others), responded to protesters’ demands and removed monuments from public view. Not all such incidents were without retaliatory violence. In a clash between protesters and members of the New Mexico Civil Guard at a sculpture of the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, on June 15 in Albuquerque, an armed man who was allegedly helping to protect the sculpture shot one of the protesters trying to pull it down.3

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Figure 0.1  Robert E. Lee Monument, with protesters, Richmond, Virginia, June 2020. Photograph by Evie Terrono.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a foreboding backdrop for the protests, having already killed tens of thousands of Americans and disrupted daily life on a global scale since February of that year. The populace was stripped of economic, social, and public health security. Prior to Floyd’s murder, the pandemic itself had brought people into

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dialogue with monuments in public space, but this expressed itself mostly in gestures of solidarity: face masks started appearing on figurative statues, as a tribute to first responders, medical personnel, and other essential workers. In the United States, monuments started wearing masks before most of the general population did. Several weeks had passed after the first outbreak of the virus before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that US residents wear cloth face coverings in public settings to slow community transmission. Face coverings came to signal care and respect for one’s neighbors and, as such, the choice to wear or not to wear one became a political gesture—another on a long list of once-personal, now-political everyday choices in the divisive climate of Donald Trump’s presidency. Art historians Patricia Kim and Paul Farber wrote that the act of adorning statues with face coverings during the pandemic demonstrated “that by engaging directly with their monuments—not just treating them as disconnected, static symbols—residents define their evolving relationships to themselves and to the world around them.”4 Teachable Monuments is a field guide for productively engaging with public art and historical monuments. The chapters we collect here show how monuments can spark civic discourse and help publics contend with difficult histories and their lasting impact on the present. In the wake of COVID-19, and during the overlapping nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality, such discourse is more important than ever. Teachable Monuments explores the pedagogical and artistic potential of a monument’s evolving history, including cases that involve removal and reinterpretation. The reasons monuments look the way they do; the circumstances of their creation from the perspective of patron, maker, and audience; the reasons the public notices or ignores them; how their meanings change over time; and how audiences and contemporary artists interact with them to highlight and/or contest aspects of the stories they tell are all subjects of investigation. The chapters collected in this volume analyze specific controversies throughout North America from all eras, and the highly various outcomes they generated, as well as examples of monuments that convey outdated or racist value systems but have yet to prompt any backlash. They offer guidelines and approaches tailored for politicians, community groups, civil servants, and students and teachers at all levels to meaningfully address monuments with troubling or upsetting subject matter. Each author provides a case study of how public art and monuments can provide a space for critical dialogue and public engagement that can shape inquiry and action going forward.

A Convulsive Moment That Changed the Monumental Landscape The social upheavals of 2020 had very recent precedents. The clash in Charlottesville, Virginia, a few years earlier had set the stage for an intensified reckoning with monuments by demonstrating their power to prompt polemics, activism, and historical retribution. Few would have predicted the sweeping cultural, social, and political reverberations that came in the wake of the twenty-four-hour news cycle

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beginning on August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. All eyes were on the city as several hundred white nationalists descended upon the town square for a nighttime rally. As they encircled the larger-than-life equestrian statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, their store-bought tiki torches illuminated its green oxidized surface, creating an eerie, yet indelible image of a monument’s potential to glorify ideologies of hate. The Lee sculpture, dedicated in 1924, was part of a broader trend of monuments to the Confederacy erected across the United States that upheld the Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War and rationalized Jim Crow-era discrimination and terrorism. White nationalists and neo-Nazis had gathered in Charlottesville as part of a “Unite the Right” rally to protest the city council’s recent vote to remove the sculpture from public view. The next twenty-four hours resulted in the deaths of three people (thirty-four more were wounded) in the clashes that ensued between the white nationalists, counterprotesters, and police.5 The violence perpetrated in the shadow of the Lee statue made it clear that the fate of historical public monuments was more than fodder for an abstract debate, but could have profoundly tragic consequences. The Charlottesville City Council’s decision to remove the Lee sculpture was prompted, in part, by a series of public demonstrations that began two years before. On June 27, 2015, activist Bree Newsome scaled a flagpole in front of the statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, and removed the Confederate flag that had flown there since the civil rights era. Upon her descent, she was immediately handcuffed and charged with defacement of public property. Newsome’s defiant climb was a direct response to the murder of nine parishioners at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a self-avowed white supremacist just a few weeks prior. After photographs surfaced showing the killer holding a Confederate flag, the drive to purge Confederate symbols from the national landscape took on renewed urgency.6 In the weeks following the shooting, people debated the meaning of Confederate symbols and their relationship to racial violence; protesters began to tag memorials to Confederate generals and soldiers with the phrase “Black Lives Matter”—all events that replayed during the 2020 protests when similarly bold acts of public dissent prompted city officials to remove these controversial monuments.7 The events in Minneapolis, Charlottesville, and Charleston demonstrated how quickly public monuments can become potent sites for symbolic and physical conflict; the violence set off a contentious and long-overdue reckoning on the fate of public monuments. Public commemorative sculptures not only spark debate; they require it. Every step in the commissioning, funding, and installation of a statue in public space is a political negotiation between multiple stakeholders, often with wildly divergent motivations and interests. Even beyond the individuals or events they celebrate, monuments are always a testament to hard-won consensus and the inevitable dissensus. And yet, even if and when disagreements fade, monuments, being accessible, symbolic, and conceptually mutable, easily accept projections of the collective trauma born from long-simmering tensions about race, gender, sexuality, and representation. Those whose histories are least often acknowledged by these monuments continue to bear the burdens of inequality and discrimination, a frightfully stark reality during Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The debates that ensued in the months and years after Charlottesville made our endeavor to engage controversial monuments even more vital than we could have imagined when we first conceived of this project, as monuments around the country became the focus of intense and sustained discussion, activism, vandalism, intervention, and removal. In the spring of 2017, just months before the events in Charlottesville, the city of New Orleans had removed four Confederate monuments under the cover of night. Mayor Mitch Landrieu gave an impassioned, and now oft-quoted, speech exorcising the cult of the Lost Cause that undergirded Confederate monuments.8 So controversial was the decision that the name of the company hired to remove the monuments had to be concealed by tape, and the workers wore face coverings to guard against identification, for fear of retribution. After the events in Charlottesville, the cities of Baltimore, Kansas City, Lynchburg, Virginia, Austin, Texas, and Durham, North Carolina, among others, followed suit in removing their Confederate monuments from public spaces in the midst of similar controversy. Other cities, like New York City, Richmond, and Louisville, Kentucky, took a more cautious response and opted to convene investigatory commissions in place of outright removal.9 (Chris Reitz and Harriet F. Senie discuss the Louisville and New York City commissions in Chapters 8 and 9, respectively, and Evie Terrono addresses the commemorative landscape in Richmond in Chapter 12.) For cities that did not reach a conclusive decision to remove Confederate monuments by June 2020, outrage over unabated racial injustice, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, made those decisions easier. In Birmingham, Alabama, for example, when activists and protesters attempted to remove the city’s 52-foot-tall Confederate Soldiers and Sailors monument themselves, Mayor Randall Woodfin appealed to the crowd, “Allow me to finish the job for you.” The city removed the obelisk that night.10 Confederate monuments, the majority of which were erected in the American South, have occasioned the highest-profiled conflicts, but protesters from across the United States have called for the removal of countless other monuments to historical figures, ranging from Christopher Columbus to Theodore Roosevelt, St. Junipero Serra, and Frank Rizzo. In September 2017, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the creation of the Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, composed of historians, sociologists, architects, artists, public officials, and activists. After soliciting thousands of responses from New Yorkers online and through inperson hearings, the Commission recommended the relocation of a statue celebrating Dr. Marion J. Sims, the nineteenth-century “father of gynecology,” who conducted experimental operations on enslaved women without the use of anesthesia.11 The Commission voted to relocate the monument from just outside Central Park to GreenWood Cemetery in Brooklyn.12 A city-sponsored competition, called “Beyond Sims,” solicited designs for a new monument, culminating in a contentious public hearing in early October 2019 that threw a spotlight on age-old tensions between the art world and community power, authority and taste.13 A few months later, the city of Pittsburgh’s Art Commission similarly voted to remove a statue of Stephen Foster, which depicted the Pittsburgh-born composer alongside a barefoot Black slave playing the banjo and sitting subserviently by his feet. Its removal also raised a host of new difficult questions about relocation and replacement.14 As cities take down monuments with ideologically

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offensive or provocative content, we risk missing an opportunity to consider what they might have to offer us, not as symbolic markers of unassailable heroism or values, but as teachable objects.

Why Engage Controversial Monuments? The idea for Teachable Monuments first arose as a response to the radical sociopolitical siloing that the 2016 election of Donald Trump revealed, leading us to consider what we, as scholars who study public monuments, might conceivably do about it. Using the monuments in our midst, we wanted to spark conversations that addressed important civic issues and, hopefully, start to bridge apparently irreconcilable differences. We were not alone in this endeavor. In 2015, two professors at the University of Pennsylvania, Paul Farber and Ken Lum, joined forces to create Monument Lab, a public art and history studio in Philadelphia composed of curators, artists, scholars, and students “to unearth the next generation of monuments and change the ways we collectively write the history of our cities.”15 Although the aims of this volume do not replicate those of Monument Lab’s many curatorial, scholarly, and educational initiatives, they have some common themes. Like Monument Lab and its growing number of collaborators and sister organizations in cities around the country and the world, this anthology aims to nurture public dialogue. We stand with Farber and Lum when they write in the catalogue that accompanied their 2017 citywide exhibition of prototype monuments in Philadelphia: “The idea that monuments are timeless, that they contain universal meaning, and that they are stand-alone figures of history—these are truisms that we believe must be challenged, not necessarily to defeat the idea of civic monuments but to invigorate them with new public engagement possibilities so that they function as constantly activated sites for critical dialogue, response, and experimentation.”16 This anthology addresses the critical issues encompassed by the recent socio-political conflicts over public symbols and offers productive ways forward by demonstrating how monuments can be used to deepen civic and historical engagement in our shared public spaces. Some explanation is needed to elucidate the term “monuments.” Since the events in Charlottesville, commentators on the topic of Confederate sculptures in the public realm have consistently used the word “monuments” to describe them. It is generally understood that monuments are erected in a spirit of triumph and celebration, to pay tribute to heroes, virtues, and victories in war. The focus and purpose of memorials, by contrast, are often to remember casualties of war or other traumatic events. Monuments and memorials often serve overlapping purposes, and these purposes also change with time. Philosophy professor Gary Shapiro, in a 2017 editorial for the New York Times about debates over the fate of Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue, acknowledged how time and context can alter whether a tribute is considered a monument or a memorial: “The contested [Confederate] works originally built in a monumental spirit are now defended as memorials” by their proponents as remembrances of Southern heritage. Shapiro cites art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto who wrote that

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monuments “commemorate the memorable and embody the myths of beginnings. Memorials ritualize remembrance and mark the reality of ends.”17 When teaching with monuments, it is important to understand why and how the people who dedicated them were invested in the values that they embody. This book focuses on monuments, works erected in a spirit of triumph and celebration that perpetuate myths now perceived as dangerous in increasingly politically divisive times. However, it also includes chapters that focus on memorials and other types of public art because choices made about what to remember, what types of art to realize in public spaces, and how those choices are made have equal potential to prompt critical inquiry and discourse. Discussions about monuments and their potential to oppress the disenfranchised and to incite violence, or alternatively to teach us about the present by illuminating history’s complexities, are fraught with conflict. Many art historians and material culture scholars, whose professional calling is to recover the context-specific meanings of objects, argue that communities should not act precipitously to remove or dismantle monuments. Some have expressed frustration, for example, that “Mayoral commissions … have generally excluded art historians, thus focusing primarily on the ideologies of those portrayed, with little concern over the specific circumstances of the monumental undertakings … and their broader relationship to other cultural enterprises.”18 City bureaucracies have prevented researchers from accessing removed monuments and have not included historians and art historians in decisions about their storage and relocation. In her research on Confederate monuments, art historian and Teachable Monuments contributor Evie Terrono asserts that “American art scholars have a unique opportunity here to situate these sculptures within the broader commemorative landscape.”19 Similarly, art historian Michele Bogart, who has been a strong voice of historic preservation, notes that while the “sphere of Confederate memorials represents a whole separate class,” all monuments embody “a range of complicated histories to which it behooves present and future individuals to have access in order to understand not only how repugnant ideologies are facilitated and become embedded within the social order, but also how their meanings are resisted, diluted, compromised, or even undermined.”20 At the same time, other art historians and cultural theorists from a variety of disciplines do not place the same emphasis on understanding the specific context of each monument before deciding their fate. In the wake of Charlottesville, art historian Nicholas Mirzoeff insisted, “It’s time to say, ‘all the monuments must fall.’ Because it’s the form that sustains white supremacy, not just the individual objects.” This position holds that monuments as a group are suspect because they are part of the classically inspired tradition of Western figurative sculpture that is inherently racist. They are typically erected by empowered members of society, and therefore represent only a selective version of history. “Many academics, artists and activists … know of such monuments in their cities and campuses. It’s time to take action against them not as individual ‘works’ but as a class—these are violent and dangerous objects.”21 Conversations about the removal of Confederate monuments for Mirzoeff and others are inextricably connected to “issues of reparations, the abolition of mass incarceration, [and] respecting the treaties with Indigenous

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nations.” He points to examples of iconoclasm in South Africa and the movements those actions precipitated in order to show how “when statues fall, it opens the way to rethinking the infrastructures of racial hierarchy.”22 Elements of these opposing perspectives were invoked in debates over the thirteenpanel Life of Washington mural painted by WPA artist Victor Arnautoff at George Washington High School in 1936. Although Arnautoff intended to subvert the myth of the national hero by painting slaves toiling in the fields of Washington’s estate and early American settlers stepping over the body of a dead Native American in their drive westward, members of the San Francisco Board of Education were not interested in the radical communist ideology that the artist embraced in the 1930s. In June 2019, they initially voted to paint over the violent images because “they glorify the white man’s role and dismiss the humanity of other people who are still alive.”23 Art historian Brianne Robertson’s research on the controversial Three Peoples murals (1940) by Kenneth Adams at the University of New Mexico acknowledges studies that show how stereotypes inflict emotional and psychological trauma. Robertson concludes that efforts to recontextualize the Three Peoples murals (somewhat comparable to efforts at George Washington High School to ameliorate the Life of Washington with a new mural Multi-Ethnic Heritage by Dewey Crumpler in 1974) failed to mitigate their cultural harm.24 Philosopher Avery Kolers’ position, that it is critical to show solidarity and deference toward groups claiming injustice, is one with which mural critics are especially sympathetic. His philosophical stance is one that readers will find relevant to several of the monument controversies addressed in this volume. The difficulty, as Chris Reitz notes in his chapter about the General John Breckinridge Castleman statue in Louisville, Kentucky, is that Kolers’ morally unobjectionable position can become less clear-cut when applied to particular case studies, each of which has its own nuanced particularities.25 After George Washington High School alumni, artists, and historians expressed dissenting opinions, a compromise was reached when the Board of Education voted a second time in August 2019 to cover the murals instead of destroying them. Countless participants in the monument debates have stressed the inevitability and significance of change in the commemorative landscape. “Removing the requirement of permanence,” writes art historian and Teachable Monuments contributor Sarah Beetham, “allows for a more measured approach to the present and future of Confederate monuments. Responses to the current crisis should rely not on defending the supposed inviolability of the monument,” Beetham states, “but on tracing the latest developments within this long timeline of monumental change.”26 Beetham and other contributors to the “Bully Pulpit” in the summer 2018 issue of Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art remind readers that the history of monuments is marked by constant change.27 Art historian Kirsten Pai Buick calls them “placeholders.” “We have become culture hoarders,” she writes, “who have exchanged a dynamic and changing public space for the illusion of fixity and permanence as represented by monuments that do not and cannot represent the complexity of our histories.”28 The American Historical Association (AHA) “Statement on Confederate Monuments” issued in August 2017 likewise held that “to remove such monuments is neither to ‘change’ history nor ‘erase’ it. What changes with such removals is what American communities

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decide is worthy of civic honor.” AHA nonetheless advocated preservation. If removed, monuments “should be preserved, just like any other historical document, whether in a museum or some appropriate venue. Prior to removal they should be photographed and measured in their original contexts.”29 Because of the threat of violence in the immediate wake of Charlottesville, however, cities like Baltimore acted quickly to remove Confederate monuments, before securing new locations for them, and without allowing time for on-site documentation and photography. Cities whose monuments were spared removal in 2017, like Birmingham, were confronted with the same urgent need to make decisions in the face of the 2020 unrest, during which numerous Confederate monuments throughout the South were vandalized and some toppled by frustrated protesters. The overnight removals that followed could have been avoided if decisions regarding appropriate actions had happened earlier and if, after Charleston or Charlottesville, civic groups and government agencies had acted faster to confront these contested public sites. The debates extend far beyond Confederate monuments and engender disagreement over whether the issues at stake are the same or not. AHA pointed out that decisions to remove Confederate monuments will not necessarily create a slippery slope to removing all manner of tributes to historical figures whose values and actions have been questioned. “There will be and should be debate about other people and events honored in our civic spaces. And precedents do matter. But so does historical specificity, and in this case the invocation of flawed analogies should not derail legitimate policy conversation.”30 Art historian Dell Upton expressed a different position: “Yes, we are on a slippery slope,” he wrote. “At best we are on it for the time being … For people with complicated legacies, we may eventually be able to find a way to commemorate them in nuanced ways. For those with straightforward legacies, such as Confederates and white supremacist politicians, no such nuance is needed or possible.”31 At the symposium Removing Public Art, hosted in New York City by the Madison Square Park Conservancy and the School of the Visual Arts, Martha Sandweiss, history professor and director of the Princeton and Slavery Project, suggested that when one shifts away from conversations about Confederate monuments, questions of commemoration become more complicated because lines between victors and victims are not always so easily drawn, and it is harder to approach such topics with hard and fast principles. With regard to this distinction, however, there is also dissent. Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Kinshasha Holman Conwill, responded that the lines between victors and victims are not always so easily drawn even in the context of discussing Confederate commemoration.32 The clarity of the issue varies depending on whose perspective one takes. History can be reinterpreted, but myths are powerfully resilient.

The Pedagogical Potential of Monuments and the Role of Artists Even more than other art forms, public monuments are the result of a culture’s inclination for codifying belief systems. A public statue is not strictly a historical

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document, but a record of a community’s understanding of its history. There is a natural disjunction between monuments, which are often permanent installations, and their function, the commemoration and contextualization of a history, which is mutable and evolutional. When cultural narratives start to devolve over time, and historical perspectives shift, the public symbols of an increasingly outdated worldview are particularly vulnerable to revision, intervention, and deaccession. Art and artists can have an important role in this process. The tradition of revising monuments is as old as commemoration itself, and stretches from fully sanctioned and authorized (i.e., a city commission votes to remove a statue of a troubled scion) to swift and unplanned (spray-painted vandalism appears on a monument overnight). But in the post-Charlottesville landscape, we may have entered, as Mya Dosch contends in Chapter 2, a new era of monumental interventions: “Symbolic interventions—unforeseen alterations to public statuary from graffiti and vandalism to recarvings—have existed as long as statues themselves. What is striking is the institutionalization of intervention as artistic practice.” In his widely seen Ted Talk, artist Titus Kaphar made a compelling case for the role contemporary artists can play by directly engaging with and “amending” offensive or upsetting artworks of the past.33 The Princeton and Slavery Project invited Kaphar and other contemporary artists to the university in 2017 as one part of a three-pronged approach to addressing the history of slavery. For his contribution, Kaphar made a temporary work titled Impressions of Liberty for the campus that featured silhouettes of three enslaved people, etched in glass and visible only under certain lighting conditions, enclosed within a bust-shaped silhouette of Princeton’s fifth president Samuel Finley, who was a slave owner.34 An intervention by artist Joiri Minaya took place from December 1, 2019, through January 18, 2020 at a Christopher Columbus statue in Miami, Florida (by Vittorio di Colbertaldo, first dedicated in 1953). Minaya’s work, The Cloaking, employed fabric printed with botanical illustrations of plants used in ethnomedicine and purging rituals as means of protection and a source of resistance by Native and Afro-diasporic peoples. She used the fabric to wrap or “cloak” both the Columbus statue and a Ponce de León statue.35 When the same Columbus statue was vandalized with red paint in June 2020, after cities across the country started removing Columbus monuments (St. Louis and Middletown, Connecticut), and protesters in other cities tore them down (St. Paul, Minnesota, and Richmond, Virginia), Minaya wrote that her temporary installations are “meant to start discussions to lead to a moment like this.” She recommended a permanent new work by a “Black/PoC/Native American/immigrant artist that could be its own thing or incorporate the statue to recontextualize it” or removal of the monument and the placement of a plaque “on the empty base describing this history and process.”36 Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War (2019), like other of his works, similarly threw a critical spotlight on the power that monuments have to reify social inequalities and false histories in urban environments.37 Responding to the landscape of Confederate statues along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Rumors of War took as its inspiration the equestrian statue of Confederate General James Ewell Brown “J.E.B.” Stuart (created by Frederick Moynihan and unveiled in 1907). In keeping with his practice

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of repositioning Black men and women within Euro-American visual and historical narratives, Wiley replaced the figure of Stuart on the horse with a heroic figure of an African American man dressed in contemporary street clothing. The result, as with many of Wiley’s other works, is both critical of and complicit with the history of power and image making.38 The statue was first unveiled in New York’s Times Square in September 2019, and then sited permanently three months later in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, within walking distance of the Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue. Wiley’s work let the Stuart statue stand untouched but offered a pointed rebuke as a new permanent installation all of one mile away from its counterpart (the Stuart statue was subsequently removed in 2020 along with three other Confederate monuments on the avenue). Farber and Lum potently demonstrated the ability of contemporary artists to “remix” the historical monument, with their Monument Lab exhibition in Philadelphia in 2017. The exhibition set out to reimagine the future of monuments in Philadelphia. A multiphase project that involved extensive community engagement, Monument Lab invited Philadelphia’s inhabitants and visitors to think about the “little known, obscured, or simply unacknowledged” histories underrepresented by the city’s collection of public art and monuments, histories that “often exist in tension with officially acknowledged narratives.”39 For this ambitious project, Farber and Lum commissioned twenty local and international artists to make works in parks and squares throughout Philadelphia that were intended to prompt dialogue about historical monuments and untold histories. One of the artists, Karyn Olivier, chose to engage with the Battle of Germantown Memorial in Philadelphia’s Vernon Park, a stone and bronze edifice bearing names and maps that document the Revolutionary War battle. Like Minaya’s The Cloaking in Miami, Olivier chose to cover the monument. She took inspiration from an earlier intervention at a Vernon Park statue of Francis Daniel Pastorius, a German settler who brought the first Germans to Philadelphia and led the first Quaker protest against slavery. During the First and Second World Wars, the Pastorius statue was boxed over because of anti-German sentiment at that time. Olivier said she wanted to apply that gesture of concealment to the contemporary moment; she aimed to make people notice the Battle of Germantown Memorial by making it invisible. For her intervention, titled The Battle Is Joined, she covered the monumentally scaled Revolutionary War stela with mirrors, so that the final installation had the uncanny effect of literally making the monument disappear, while at the same time reflecting the constantly shifting activity in the park.40 Each of these is an instance of sanctioned response, approaching built monuments with official paperwork in hand and the go-ahead from relevant stakeholders. The category of unsanctioned interventions includes art “made in unexpected and/or forbidden public places by both anonymous and well-known art personalities … to reclaim those public spaces for political resistance and protest.”41 In the editorial statement for her guest-edited issue of the journal Public Art Dialogue on “The Dilemma of Art’s Permanence,” art historian Erika Doss explained, “Vandalism highlights public art’s basic vulnerability, which, because of its very designation as public art, exposes it to the processual conditions and variable circumstances of public places and space, audience and duration.”42 To that list of perpetual change factors, we

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can add protest vandalism. Terrono noted in an essay for the 2017 Public Art Dialogue newsletter that while graffiti on Confederate monuments is considered vandalism, “it has revealed that for the first time, Americans are engaging consciously with the broad commemorative landscape, interrogating its iconography and currency, aiming all the while to foreground persistent racial injustices.”43 Art historian Marisa Lerer has also drawn attention to the impact of vandalism as a form of protest in her research on Argentinian memorials to the disappeared—victims of state-sponsored terrorism from Argentina’s last military dictatorship (1976–83). Lerer showed how, in Argentina, vandalism is a powerful mode of political expression both for supporters of human rights organizations and for supporters of the dictatorship. Artists working with human rights organizations take credit for their acts of vandalism “with the purpose of challenging official history and questioning the values of a nation through its built national icons.”44 Sanctioned or not, artistic interventions into, onto, and against the monument have the potential to activate the static form—a key goal of Teachable Monuments and its contributors.

How Teachable Monuments Is Organized This volume is organized into three main thematic parts that outline the various strategies and spaces of engagement for addressing public monuments and their changing meanings. The first, Teaching Strategies, offers specific guidelines and curricula to be used in classrooms of any academic level. The second part, Political Strategies, examines the civic and political discourses surrounding the removal and relocation of public monuments and the commissioning of new artworks. The chapters in the third part, Engagement Strategies, address different approaches for the reinterpretation and recontextualization of problematic monuments. These three strategies are interrelated, and therefore many of the chapters relate to and support one another across parts. Teaching Strategies presents curricula and case studies by six educators who share how they have mined the educational potential of monuments in cities and university campuses. These lesson plans address contested public histories and historical representations, encourage institutional critique, and demonstrate the rewards of discourse in academic settings. Fourth grade teacher Adelaide Wainwright contributes a chapter about a social studies unit that she developed in response to the September 2017 formation of the New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers. Wainwright concludes that “by taking advantage of [the] nuanced modes of thinking and seeing [required of learning about monuments], young learners find themselves to be participants in history and potential agents of change.” Mya Dosch and Annie Dell’Aria both share activities they developed to engage college students in dialogue about public art. Dosch invites her students to think critically about artists’ interventions using a Mexico City case study, and Dell’Aria asks her class to confront the politics and hidden agendas of institutional spaces, by researching and mapping the art on the Miami University campus in Ohio. Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, a

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museum educator at the Yale Center for British Art, employs audience engagement skills to facilitate workshops at the Yale School of Medicine’s psychiatry department about historical campus portraits that have an alienating effect on an increasingly diverse faculty, staff, and student body. “The core challenge,” according to ReynoldsKaye, “is how to reconcile the exclusionary atmosphere created by an overwhelming number of portraits of ‘pale and male’ leaders with the need for representations of the institution’s past.” Finally, both Sarah Sonner and Kailani Polzak write about curatorial experiences recontextualizing objects in campus museums. Sonner works at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Austin, Texas, where she helped curate the first exhibition to recontextualize a removed Confederate monument. Polzak’s exhibition, “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi and Material Histories in the Making at the Williams College Museum of Art, co-curated with Sonnet Kekilia Coggins, engaged students and the campus community in the college’s nineteenth-century colonialist histories. The sustained level of student critical engagement throughout proves the capacity of students of many ages and experiences to think critically about how histories are constructed through public commemorative art. While this part provides sample lessons that are specific to particular locales, historical eras, and educational institutions, it is our hope that they will inspire readers to incorporate monument-based teaching into their own curricula and to encourage critical analysis of monuments and the histories they both represent and obscure. The act of removing controversial historical monuments or commissioning new ones is a political decision, and the civic discourse engendered by debates over the pros and cons of removal is a teachable moment. The chapters in Political Strategies shed light on this complex topic from a number of perspectives. Art historian Sarah Beetham demonstrates how debates over Confederate monuments are “an important platform for community conversation and political action.” Beetham advocates for the decisions over the fate of problematic monuments to be made at the local level. This process can provide opportunities for scholars to offer their expertise to help develop solutions for communities grappling with these difficult issues. Assistant professor and gallery director at the University of Louisville Chris Reitz and professor of art history and at The City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center Harriet F. Senie share insider perspectives of what it was like to be members of public art advisory panels convened in the wake of Charlottesville. Reitz served on Louisville, Kentucky’s Mayoral Commission, which was charged with developing “criteria for evaluating whether monuments in the city’s collection could be interpreted as ‘honoring bigotry, racism, and slavery.’” Reitz discusses the guidelines for monument maintenance, removal, and recontextualization that the Commission developed. Senie served on New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers and offers a frank assessment of the positive outcomes and limitations of the commission. While the chapters in this part highlight examples of commemorative public artworks that pay tribute to different eras and events, they all show how education and commemoration play equally formative roles in memory making, and, perhaps most significantly, how public policy informs those educational and commemorative practices. Contributor art historian Jennifer Favorite examines the political

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implications of the now-cancelled plans to build an educational center for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. She stresses that while it is important to raise questions about how the public understands and imagines history, it is equally important to question “who has the authority over that history.” Also working within a national context, Michele Cohen, curator for the Architect of the Capitol, discusses the dilemma of responsible stewardship of two badly damaged monuments that raise difficult questions about the US government’s fraught history of colonialization. Rather than preserving and displaying statues publicly within the Capitol complex, Cohen supports “virtual preservation” that would allow for elective viewing of the artworks and evolving educational initiatives. Finally, art historian Evie Terrono examines the 2003 unveiling of a statue of Abraham Lincoln and his son Tad in the context of the politically contested Confederate landscape of Richmond, Virginia. The statue, intended to upset the dominant Lost Cause narrative in the city, became the subject of protest by Neo-Confederate groups who considered the presence of Lincoln in the capital of the Confederacy an “affront to their southern honor.” The chapters in this part offer models for how scholars and elected public officials can work together to develop best practices for regulating the potential removal, relocation, and commissioning of monuments. The third part, Engagement Strategies, represents a sampling of some of the most creative and thought-provoking cultural work that has been taking place in response to nationwide debates over controversial historical monuments. Sue Mobley, senior research scholar at Monument Lab, discusses her experience with Paper Monuments, a public art and public history project developed within the context of the removal of Confederate statues in the city of New Orleans. The Paper Monuments team, a collective of designers, artists, urbanists, and educators, aimed to expand public knowledge of subaltern histories by eliciting public proposals for new monuments and commissioning temporary installations around the city. Art historians Charlene G. Garfinkle, Laura M. Holzman, Modupe Labode, Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, and Jung-Sil Lee examine different initiatives to commission new public monuments and some of the inherent challenges in re-envisioning the monumental landscape. Garfinkle details the highly publicized Fearless Girl statue in New York and its dialogue with the Charging Bull statue and its observers. Holzman, Modupe Labode, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid consider the “afterlife” of artist Fred Wilson’s E Pluribus Unum, a public art project that was canceled due to public controversy, and the many interventions—including public engagement initiatives, classroom activities, and a permanent sculpture—that came in the wake of its cancellation. Lee highlights the educational value and reconciliatory function of “comfort women” memorials built in the United States and their role in recognizing the contested history of their subjects. Historians for a Better Future stress the educational role of public historians in their contribution that outlines a series of interventions at Confederate monuments in North Carolina. This group insists on the interrelationship of education and activism and borrows from the history of early twentieth-century suffrage demonstrations for the visual language of their efforts to engage the public in monuments’ histories. The final chapter is an interview between architect María F. Carrascal and artist Kenseth

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Armstead discussing his 2018 temporary installation Washington 20/20/20, which recontextualized the nineteenth-century George Washington monument in Union Square New York. Together with Carrascal, Armstead envisions a new practice of “monumentality” that emphasizes the role of art and artists in the regeneration of truly public and inclusive cities. This final part, by including a range of strategies for creative engagement with monuments, both temporary and permanent, developed by artists, art historians, educators, and public historians, encourages continued dialogue and innovative thinking about the potential of teachable monuments. We hope the lessons and case studies in Teachable Monuments will be used widely in classrooms and communities seeking practical guidelines for deciding the fate of controversial monuments, for sparking civic discourse, and as models for how to use the monuments in the public sphere to engage and inform all those concerned with their significance then and now. The violence that marked the spring of 2020 highlights the urgency of resolving disputes over monuments and memorials before events overtake dialogue and conflict engulfs consensus.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

6 7

Decolonize This Place posted the graphic “How to Take Down a Monument” to Instagram on June 16, 2020. Instagram administrators removed the post for “coordinating harm or promoting crime” in violation of the community guidelines. Decolonize This Place disputed the removal and Instagram subsequently reposted it. However, it was soon removed once again, and this time Instagram did not provide an option to dispute it further. decolonizethisplace, Instagram post, June 17, 2020, accessed June 17, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CBig6UPgLIl/?igshid=m60m1 1krs82s. Sarah Mervosh, Simon Romero, and Lucy Tompkins, “Reconsidering the Past, One Statue at a Time,” New York Times, June 16, 2020, accessed June 17, 2020, https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/us/protests-statues-reckoning.html. Katy Shepherd, Abigail Hauslohner, and Hannah Knowles, “Suspected Gunman Is Arrested after Man Is Shot at Albuquerque Protest,” Washington Post, June 16, 2020, accessed June 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/16/ albuquerque-militia-shooting-protest/. Paul Faber and Patricia Kim, “Masked Monuments: Parting Gifts to Public Space,” Monument Lab Bulletin, March 27, 2020, accessed May 28, 2020, https:// monumentlab.com/bulletin/masked-monuments-parting-gifts-to-public-space. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was killed when a man drove a car into a crowd of marching counter-protesters, and two state troopers were killed in a helicopter crash. Maggie Astor, Christina Caron, and Daniel Victor, “A Guide to the Charlottesville Aftermath,” New York Times, August 13, 2017, accessed May 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html. Soon after Newsome removed the flag through extralegal means, then-Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill legally removing the flag from the Statehouse grounds permanently. For an overview of monument-related debates and responses that followed the Emanuel AME Church shooting in 2015, see Sarah Beetham, “From Spray Cans to

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10

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Teachable Monuments Minivans: Contesting the Legacy of Confederate Soldier Monuments in the Era of ‘Black Lives Matter,’” Public Art Dialogue 6, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 9–33. The text of the speech is reprinted in Landrieu’s book, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History (New York: Penguin, 2018), 217–27. After a year of deliberation, Richmond’s Monument Avenue Commission recommended the removal of the Jefferson Davis Monument from Monument Avenue. In the report, released in July 2018, the Commission also recommended the addition of signage to the other four Confederate monuments on the Avenue, but as of January 2020, the Richmond City Council was still negotiating legislation barring the removal of monuments from city property. At that time, the Council requested the Virginia Assembly to enact legislation to exempt the City from codes preventing the removal of memorials and monuments on city property. See the Monument Avenue Commission Report and the records of the Richmond Legislature, accessed May 27, 2020, https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/594bdfc3ff7c502289dd13b3/t/5b3a821788251b63fef735f7/1530561059506/ MonumentAvenueCommissionFINAL.pdf; and https://richmondva.legistar.com/ LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4278071&GUID=E886C05B-3EF1-45D2-A178-498A7BC F4D00&Options=Advanced&Search=&FullText=1. Colin Dwyer, “Confederate Monument Being Removed after Birmingham Mayor Vows to ‘Finish the Job,’” NPR, June 2, 2020, accessed June 4, 2020, https://www.npr. org/2020/06/02/867659459/confederate-monument-removed-after-birminghammayors-vow-to-finish-the-job. The medical legacy of Sims is more complicated than such a simplified narrative suggests. For a more in-depth discussion of Sims’ legacy and monument, see Harriet F. Senie’s chapter 9. Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, “Report to the City of New York,” January 2018, accessed July 4, 2018, https://www1.nyc.gov/ assets/monuments/downloads/pdf/mac-monuments-report.pdf. As of this writing, the Sims sculpture remains in Green-Wood Cemetery storage. Community members protested the relocation of the sculpture to the Cemetery. Moreover, though GreenWood is the site of Sims’ burial place, the over-life-sized sculpture does not fit on his grave and there is no space nearby. Hakim Bishara, “‘We Feel Very Betrayed’: Community Protests Replacement for J. Marion Sims Monument,” Hyperallergic, October 7, 2019, accessed May 29, 2020, https://hyperallergic.com/521269/we-feel-very-betrayed-community-protestsreplacement-for-j-marion-sims-monument/. Claire Voon, “Pittsburgh Will Replace Racist Monument with Statue of a Black Woman,” Hyperallergic, March 16, 2018, accessed May 29, 2020, https://hyperallergic. com/433009/pittsburgh-will-replace-racist-monument-statue-black-woman/. Kirk Savage addresses the Stephen Foster removal in an interview with Paul Farber for Episode Two of the Monument Lab podcast, “Civil War Memory and Monuments to White Supremacism with Art Historian Kirk Savage,” accessed May 29, 2020, https://monumentlab.com/podcast/civil-war-memory-and-monuments-to-whitesupremacy-with-art-historian-kirk-savage. Paul Farber and Ken Lum, eds., Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 2020), x. Ibid., xiv.

Why Monuments Matter

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17 Gary Shapiro, “The Meaning of Our Confederate Monuments,” New York Times, op-ed, May 15, 2017, accessed July 4, 2018, https://nyti.ms/2rgow1K; and Arthur Danto, “The Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial,” in Arthur C. Danto Essays. The Wake of Art: Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste, eds. Gregg Horrowitz and Tom Huhn (Amsterdam: OPA, 1998), 153. 18 Evie Terrono, “‘For the Pleasure of All Who Pass By’: Grand Conceptions, Conflict, and Collective Discontent on the Confederate Landscape,” Public Art Dialogue Newsletter 9, no. 2 (Fall 2017), accessed July 4, 2018, https://publicartdialogue.org/ newsletter/fall-2017. 19 Ibid. 20 Michele Bogart, “Expertise Matters: A New York Case Study on Protecting and Preserving Public Art,” Public Art Dialogue 6, no. 1 (Spring 2016): fn 4, 152. 21 Nicholas Mirzoeff, “All the Monuments Must Fall #Charlottesville,” accessed July 4, 2018, http://www.nicholasmirzoeff.com/bio/all-the-monuments-must-fallcharlottesville/. 22 Ibid. For a discussion of the debate over South African monuments see, Kim Miller and Brenda Schmahmann, eds., Public Art in South Africa: Bronze Warriors and Plastic Presidents (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). 23 Paloma Flores, a member of the Pit-River Nation and coordinator of George Washington High School’s Indian Education Program, is cited in Carol Pogash, “These High School Murals Depict an Ugly History. Should They Go?” New York Times, April 11, 2019, accessed May 27, 2020, https://nyti.ms/2VCu2LZ. For a sampling of opposing views on the controversy, see Michele H. Bogart, “The Problem with Canceling the Arnautoff Murals,” New York Review of Books, September 16, 2019, accessed May 27, 2020, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/09/16/the-problemwith-canceling-the-arnautoff-murals/; and Jennifer Wilson, “Black People Don’t Need Murals to Remember Injustice,” Nation, July 9, 2019, accessed May 27, 2020, https:// www.thenation.com/article/archive/san-francisco-school-mural/. 24 Brianne Robertson, “An Old Solution to an Old Problem? Kenneth Adams, Jesús Guerrero Galván, and the Failure of Recontextualization,” Public Art Dialogue 10, no. 2 (Fall 2020): pp. 131–159. 25 Cited in Chapter 8, Chris Reitz, “Learning from Louisville: John Breckenridge Castleman, His Statue, and a Public Sphere Revisited,” 109–10. 26 Sarah Beetham, “Confederate Monuments and the Inevitable Forces of Change,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 1 (Spring 2018), accessed June 5, 2020, https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/beethambully-pulpit/. 27 Dell Upton, “Bully Pulpit: Confederate Monuments, Public Memory and Public History,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 1 (Spring 2018), accessed June 5, 2020, https://editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/ confederate-monuments-public-memory-and-public-history/. 28 Kirsten Pai Buick, untitled essay, “Bully Pulpit,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 1 (Spring 2018), accessed June 5, 2020, https:// editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/buick-bully-pulpit/. 29 Statement on Confederate Monuments, Approved by AHA Council on August 28, 2017, accessed July 4, 2018, file:///Users/jenwingate/Downloads/AHA%20 Statement%20on%20Confederate%20Monuments%20(1).pdf. 30 Ibid.

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31 Dell Upton, “The #HimToo Movement,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 4, no. 1 (Spring 2018), accessed June 5, 2020, https:// editions.lib.umn.edu/panorama/article/upton-bully-pulpit/. 32 The Madison Square Art symposium, Removing Public Art, took place on June 1, 2018, at the School of the Visual Arts, and was organized by Martin Friedman Deputy Director and Senior Curator of Madison Square Park Conservancy Brooke Kamin Rapaport. A recording of the symposium can be viewed here: https://www. madisonsquarepark.org/archive-programsevents/mad-sq-art-symposium-removingpublic-art, accessed June 5, 2020. 33 Titus Kaphar, “Can Art Amend History?” Ted Talk, April 2017, accessed May 29, 2020, https://www.ted.com/talks/titus_kaphar_can_art_amend_history?language=en. As of May 2020, Kaphar’s filmed talk has over 1.5 million views. 34 Kaphar designed the June 15, 2020 cover of TIME magazine as a tribute to George Floyd. It featured a contemporary Black Madonna and child. The anguished Black mother holds a void, a cut away silhouette of a missing child. Kaphar wrote, “One Black mother’s loss WILL be memorialized. This time I will not let her go.” Titus Kaphar, “‘I Cannot Sell You This Painting.’ Titus Kaphar on His George Floyd TIME Cover,” TIME, June 4, 2020, https://time.com/5847487/george-floyd-time-cover-tituskaphar/, accessed June 6, 2020. 35 See Joiri Minaya’s website http://www.joiriminaya.com/The-Cloaking, accessed May 28, 2020. 36 Joiri Minaya, Instagram post, June 14, 2020, accessed June 16, 2020, https://www. instagram.com/p/CBbKxxTFXhA/. 37 “Sculpture Created by Kehinde Wiley for the VMFA,” Virginia Museum of Fine Art, accessed May 29, 2020, https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/. 38 Kehinde Wiley says this about his work in a video on display in the exhibition, Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley at the Brooklyn Museum from January 24 through May 10, 2020. The exhibition featured a maquette of Wiley’s Rumors of War. 39 Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum, “Proposing Monuments for Philadelphia,” in the brochure for the citywide exhibition, Monument Lab: A Public Art & History Project September 16 to November 19, 2017. 40 Sharon Hayes, Karyn Olivier, and Paul Farber, “Monumental Exchange II” (a transcription of a public conversation at the University of the Arts on September 20, 2017), in Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, eds. Paul Farber and Ken Lum (Philadelphia: Temple University Press: 2020), 263–5. 41 Erika Doss, “Guest Editor’s Statement: Thinking about Forever,” Public Art Dialogue 6, no 1 (Spring 2018): 2. 42 Ibid. 43 Evie Terrono, “‘For the Pleasure of All Who Pass By.’” 44 Marisa Lerer, “Banners, Bridges, Stencils, and Christmas Trees: Creating and Concealing Aesthetic Protest Actions in Argentina,” Public Art Dialogue 8, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 198–223.

Part One

Teaching Strategies

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Developing Essential Questions for a StudentDriven Fourth Grade Monument Study By Adelaide Wainwright

On a gray winter afternoon in Brooklyn, the throngs of workers that populate the courthouses and office buildings of Cadman Plaza West moved along the sidewalk at their typical, steady pace. They were New Yorkers, and they bore little mind to interruptions to the flow of their stream: dogs tugging at leashes, tourists squinting into the horizon as they sought out the Brooklyn Bridge, even physical impediments. They moved around each with purpose and mindless ease. By contrast, another set of New Yorkers had sprung from their neighboring school with all the wild enthusiasm of a catch of fry, carried with the current while shooting off to ogle the distractions of their environs. These were fourth graders, and though they traveled with purpose, they traveled with wonder, too. A few blocks from campus, the nebulous mass of twenty-two students—along with me and their associate classroom teacher, their director of Diversity and Equity, and a parent and expert on the monument they would soon interrogate—gathered together, our proximity a buffer to the cold, blustery winds. The students carried clipboards with trip sheets and pencils. As the group quieted, I alerted them to the first prompt posed on their sheet, an initial consideration that came from their own work in the weeks prior: “Describe what you see. Be as specific as possible—details are important!” They looked up at the great metal artifact, which acted much like a river boulder carving into the surrounding flow. In the hush, pencils scratched while a few students wandered to the opposite side to get a different view. After a few minutes of seeing, observations poured forth: “It’s made out of metal. A dark metal! I wonder if it was carved or cast.” “It’s so tall! That thing at the bottom—that pedestal?—makes that man stand really high.” It was true. At nearly fifteen feet tall, the height of the monument made the 9- and 10-year-olds crane their necks to take it all in. “He’s wearing a jacket, or a cape that makes him look important. It looks as if he’s going on a quest, or as if he has some really serious work to do.”

Students erupted into a frenzy of chatter with theories about who this man might be. At this, I reminded students of our conversations about the difference between

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observation and interpretation. We were drifting quickly into the realm of the latter, but it is difficult to steer away from that course. So, I encouraged them to bring their gaze down to a stratum of the monument that had not yet captured their attention. To the left and below the large male figure, at the base of the pedestal, a female figure kneels on one knee while stepping off the other foot. She appears to be placing a palm branch at the man’s feet. On the other side of the pedestal, two children seem to be working together to lay a garland, again at the man’s feet. Several students were taken aback that they had somehow missed these figures so close to their eye level. One of my more outspoken, dynamic, and observant students looked uncharacteristically uncomfortable. “I want to talk about the woman on the left,” he said. “I’m not sure how to put this … but there’s a way we think of people looking based on their race, and I think that woman is supposed to be Black.” I asked him why he would hesitate to share this observation. He replied, “Something about how this monument is put together doesn’t feel right.” Our director of Diversity and Equity stepped in and encouraged the students to use their art knowledge to think about scale in the sculpture. They looked on in quiet, some whispering to each other, until one spoke up. “Wait! That man is way, way bigger than that woman! It doesn’t look real! He looks like a giant!” The students’ theories about the significance of this man and his relationship with the other figures in the monument circulated, one idea building off of another until a fabric of thought, reaction, and feeling had been woven. The monument had now been observed through fourth grade eyes: a white man, glorified through stance and stature, a hero of African American people and children. It was a monument to preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, created by sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward and dedicated in 1891 (Figure 1.1). This neighborhood fixture, invisible to most out for their morning coffee break, had in just a few minutes invigorated these young historians with burning questions, the same they had begun to ask a few weeks prior. The two weeks of winter break provide a clean slate in the approximate middle of the school year. For my fourth graders, it had been an opportunity to recharge after a powerful yet challenging fall. It was the 2017–18 school year, and several tragic events of the summer of 2017 were percolating in the consciousness of these children. Mostly, these events were filtered through conversations with their parents, but they were also couched more tangentially but just as significantly in experiences. Over the summer, two students in the class had visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, which had opened to visitors the previous fall. They came into the classroom in September overflowing with information about our country’s history and present, information they needed to make sense of. From those first, early days, the tone was set. It would be a year of making meaning from within and about a tumultuous world. That fall, the core focus of our social studies curriculum was essentially the same as it had been in previous years. The students learned about colonial New York and the American Revolution through trips to New York City museums, role playing, primary and secondary documents, and an overnight to a colonial mill village in upstate New York. Although the majority of these learning experiences carried

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Figure 1.1  John Quincy Adams Ward, Henry Ward Beecher, 1891, Brooklyn, New York. “DSCN7819” by annulla is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/2.0/.

over from an established curriculum, the frisson of the moment had an undeniable impact on both the teachers’ approach to the content and the students’ interaction and understanding of it. Our collective attention had been sharpened, and the schema of this particular group of children—with their awareness of racial inequities, both historical and experienced—put a spotlight on the complicated origins of our

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country. Their questions about systems of power rooted in race and gender, along with their willingness to consider the shaping elements of the period and the effect these had on the decisions made by those in power while demanding better, carried the undercurrent of the present. This presented the optimal problem, or dilemma, of studying the past: contending with how it intersects with today. This is especially true for children at this age. Fourth graders are “industrious and intellectually curious … beginning to see the bigger world, including issues of fairness and justice.”1 Regardless of the time in which they live, children of this developmental age are uniquely positioned to engage with the world beyond their immediate experience. Earlier in their lives, they found terra firma in the here and now and then later gained the ability to grapple with the history of their region. In fourth grade, these foundations converge and couple with the power to consider the globe as being rich with experiences that they cannot begin to fathom but, given the opportunity, they will try. This critical aspect of the learning life of fourth graders is rooted in a key feature of their emotional and cognitive development: the solidification of empathy, particularly in the fourth grader’s development of moral reasoning and the capacity to feel the emotions of others. It is no wonder, then, that my students had come into the year brimming with questions and worries that demanded a thoughtful and sensitive response that affirmed their importance as active participants in their world. After sharing their learning about the colonial period and beginnings of our nation in a “Living History Museum,” the fourth graders reflected on what they had uncovered and realized. On the one hand, they were impressed, as many are, with the founders’ audacity, military feats, and confrontation of systemic injustice faced by the colonists, notably the acts and taxes implemented by the English Parliament that prevented economic and political mobility. Certain students had focused on these, while others on George Washington versus King George, the Boston Tea Party, the geography of the region and its impact on trade and culture, and so on. Others still focused on the Triangle Trade, and it was the presentation of these students that left the greatest mark. My students vocalized their confusion about the bleak quandary of how it could be that a new country with declared values of inclusion and the inherent rights of men was achieved through enslavement and oppression. What is more, they exclaimed, that oppression, from their burgeoning alertness to some of the most challenging realities of their time, had not been erased but had shifted to take on different shapes. So, again, as fall turned to winter, we were returned to the present by way of the past. The students recalled an article from Junior Scholastic that they had read earlier in the year, which covered the debates over the problematic Confederate monuments of the South.2 Now, with the scale and impact of slavery at the forefront of their thinking, they saw the dilemma of showcasing monuments to the heroes of some but certainly not all. Of course, they declared, they should come down! As a teacher, I was thrilled. Not because of my students’ righteous indignation, but because of the opportunity it so clearly presented. My fourth grade colleagues and I realized that a study of monuments could be a catalyst for powerful understandings of relationships between self, identity, and society, and how history is experienced and

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conveyed. In other words, a study of monuments would center our students in history rather than relegate them to the role of observer. As educational theorist John Dewey holds, the immediacy of children’s experience provides a potent challenge: It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented. The process is a continuous spiral.3

Dewey’s problem is much the same as what many educators of children call an essential question: an open-ended puzzle rooted in the lives and potential of all participating learners that will lead them to deeper knowledge and meaning making. A study of monuments, particularly taken on by residents of a city with what feels like a monument on every corner, seemed primed to deliver the possibility that the young thinkers would find these in multitudes. The only challenge seemed to be where to begin. As a study of monuments is at its core so personal and individual, the microcontext of this particular group of learners bears some unpacking. First and perhaps most significantly, they were students at a New York City independent school. From this central fact branch others: that the group of students represented a range of socioeconomic classes, but mostly included children of upper-middle-class families; that there were many races represented, but not all, and the class was predominantly white; that the school’s location and mission align with and encourage progressive politics; and that, by most American standards, the school is old—about 170 years. It was clear that all of these elements would color my students’ various experiences of the study and would ultimately rise to the surface, though I could not anticipate to what extent. As our teaching team planned for the launch of the study, we grappled with which of the innumerable monuments in the city we could explore first. The enormous number of choices along with the emotionally and intellectually challenging history of many of them left us feeling temporarily at a loss. Then, it dawned on us that our particular context could be an asset. We decided to start with the most accessible set of monuments for this group, a set with which they would all be able to emotionally connect without initial background teaching: the various monuments found within our Pre-K to twelfth grade school. The study began with the most foundational question: What is a monument? In the classroom, students “chalk talked” on chart paper, writing their own ideas and responding to those of their classmates through writing. We posted the charts, messy but full, in front of the classroom and looked for themes. It emerged from the students’ examples and thinking that monuments are objects (sometimes sculptures, sometimes plaques, sometimes buildings, and more) that celebrate someone’s life, especially if that life involved positive contributions to their community. We were in as good a place as any to venture out on a monument search, a walking trip within our school.

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Teachable Monuments

The idea of the walking trip as a uniquely powerful instrument of learning was given American form and language by Bank Street College of Education founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell. Mitchell was both rebelling against the traditional, sermonic education she had received as a child—which espoused the idea of the child as a passive “sponge,” a phrase our country has not yet shaken—and responding to her context: Depression-era New York. The walking trips she took with young children and student teachers around the city, in which they interacted with all elements of their environment, provided both with the chance to actively participate in their own learning. Mitchell’s walking trips helped define American progressive education and have been a source of inspiration for generations of teacher leaders ever since. As educator Sal Vascellero explained, “I saw how the concept of the trips offered an expansive way of thinking about educating teachers and children: a pedagogy spearheaded by democratic purpose; a view of education that contributes to our understanding of relevance, personal engagement, and participation; and a vision of academic excellence based on learning from experience.”4 My students were thrilled to go on their within-school monument hunt and swarmed at the classroom door with note-taking materials at the ready: a pencil and trip sheet that encouraged them to name first what they saw—the type, description, and the location of each monument—and then their inferential understandings—the story or history they might glean from each. We walked out of our classroom, eyes peeled, and made our way to the floor below to a familiar space: our school’s beloved art gallery. It is a space the students had occupied, enjoyed, and actively learned in and from since they had each matriculated. Yet, it came as a revelation to most that the plaque at the entry to the gallery was a sort of monument, and that the gallery itself—a memorial to a parent of an alumnus—could be seen as a monument, too. Students sketched the small plaque and the space, using labels to describe what pencil could not convey. And then they began to wonder out loud: “I bet she was an artist. She must have loved art.” “Maybe she loved people coming together? This is a space for gathering.” “She must have been really loved for them to make this monument to her.” I asked who “them” might refer to. “Her family?” “The school!” “Her child’s class! Or the parents in that class!”

Students talked in smaller groups about who this woman could have been, the impact she might have had in her life, and the impact of this monument on the school. They noted that this monument served at least two functions: to help the living remember an individual and, most likely, to perpetuate what that individual most valued. I asked them to hold on to that thinking as we moved on in our hunt. Through their focused wandering within the school, the students discovered an array of monuments and monument-like objects. They ranged from simple to intricate, discrete and easily missable to grand features of the campus. The students’ observations

A Student-Driven Fourth Grade Monument Study

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and conversations became more nuanced and attuned to the details of the monuments as well as to the variety of interpretations possible for each, even from within our group. Over the next several days in the classroom, we reflected on our monument hunt and honed the questions that would guide our study going forward. These questions were: What is a monument? How is its position important? How are the materials (the medium) of the monument important? What does it say about the person/event commemorated? What does it say about the values of the people who created it? The students then applied these questions to a number of monuments from around the country and the world, many of which were in some way problematic. In our discussions about each, students grappled repeatedly with the emotional and intellectual friction that takes place when the all too frequent intersection between heroism and oppression is uncovered. They learned key facts of historical events and developed their synthesizing skills in the process. In ad hoc debates, students thoughtfully challenged each other’s points of view, and in these interactions began the challenging but imperative work of honoring their own experience in the world and allowing it to inform their perspective while capitalizing on their empathetic potential to see why others would see the same monument differently. They found that the more closely tied to a monument they were, be it because of region or identity, the more visceral their response would be. As the study progressed to include neighborhood walks and visits around the city, students of color and girls, in particular, vocalized their difficult feelings stemming both from not seeing themselves in the vast majority of monuments around them and from the diminished position people of color and women were often relegated to in other monuments. Their classmates listened and, from the depth of shared experience that bridges difference, chose to support their classmates by adjusting their own interpretations of those monuments to provide space for the thoughts and feelings of their peers. The fourth grade teachers saw the need for our students to confront their legitimate concerns with action. We partnered with our art teacher to merge a biography study in our classrooms, in which the students researched an individual they admire and who they feel deserves physical representation in the world, with the creation of clay busts of these historical figures in art class. While this integrated approach resonated with many students, others made it clear that the momentum that had built during our monument study deserved a greater response. Moreover, the collective conversation about New York City monuments had increasingly been flowing into and informing our own conversations. As the mayor’s assembled group of experts held town hall meetings to gather New Yorkers’ positions on how to handle several problematic monuments around the city, my students wanted to know how they, as children, could participate. They wanted to immerse themselves in monument conversation. So, we turned to one of the most monument-rich locations in the five boroughs: Central Park. In partnerships, student gathered data on every monument in the park dedicated to an individual. The two days they spent organizing and charting their findings were the most energetic days of the school year, above all when we posted the graphs of their findings on a bulletin board in a highly trafficked space outside our classroom. From that day until the end of the year, the students would return from specialist classes

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to find upper school students and teachers, who shared our hallway, talking in low, emphatic tones about the stark realizations our class had revealed. This final experience, along with being interviewed by a senior for a film project on problematic monuments and a visit from art historian Harriet F. Senie as member of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s monument committee, demonstrated for this group of passionate, curious, and empathetic young historians, sociologists, and activists just how impactful they might be. They had entered the study from a place of inquiry, creating and seeking answers to essential questions that would transform their relationship with the past, their city, and the world at large. While their study had been broad in scope, it was so successful because it was directly and intimately rooted in the students’ experiences. One wonders, then, to what degree this success was not only connected to the region and cross-section of class, race, and gender found in the class but depended upon it. How would a different group of learners initiate and engage with a monument study? Can monuments be portals to critical thinking, regardless of one’s location? I venture that the answer to the latter is yes, of course they can, yet the unique identities of the learners must determine the points of entry to the study. In addition, one must become alert to monuments all around them to see how subtly but significantly they feature in all human life and our narratives about the past. By taking advantage of these nuanced modes of thinking and seeing, young learners find themselves to be participants in history and potential agents of change.

Notes 1 2

3 4

Chip Wood, Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages 4–14 (Turners Falls, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children, 2007), 111. Laura Anastasia, “Monumental Battle: Why a Movement to Remove Confederate Monuments Has Sparked Violence, Protest, and Heated Debate,” Junior Scholastic, September 18, 2017, accessed June 24, 2020, https://junior.scholastic.com/pages/ news/2017-18/monumental-battle.html. John Dewey, Experience & Education (New York: Touchstone, 1938), 79. Sal Vascellaro, Out of the Classroom and into the World: Learning from Field Trips, Educating from Experience, and Unlocking the Potential of Our Students and Teachers (New York: New Press, 2011), 7.

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Encouraging Intervention: Project-Based Learning with Problematic Public Monuments By Mya Dosch

If the nineteenth century was the height of statue-mania, to be replaced by a late twentieth-century enthusiasm for memorials and counter-monuments, it seems as if we are now entering an era of interventions.1 The artistic intervention is certainly in vogue as a way to highlight monuments’ shortcomings and to provoke dialogue about these often-ignored markers. This impetus is not new. Symbolic interventions— unforeseen alterations to public statuary from graffiti and vandalism to recarvings— have existed as long as statues themselves. What is striking is the institutionalization of intervention as artistic practice. New York City’s 2017–18 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers embraced the strategy of commissioning artistic interventions. Up for debate was, Manhattan’s statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims (1813–83), often (and problematically) deemed “The Father of Modern Gynecology.”2 The heroic monument was the subject of ongoing community protests by East Harlem Preservation and the Black Youth Project 100, as Sims completed his experiments in gynecological surgery on enslaved Black women without their consent and without anesthesia. In their recommendations, the Commission suggested that the City remove the statue of Sims from its prominent location bordering Central Park. Then, they recommended that a new artwork or works that confront Sims’s legacy be commissioned to intervene in the pedestal.3 Similarly, though there was no consensus on the controversial 1892 Gaetano Russo statue of Christopher Columbus that towers above Manhattan’s Columbus Circle, the majority of the Commission’s members advocated that it remain with “substantial additive measures,” including temporary artist installations.4 This interest in interventions is not limited to New York: in 2017, eminent international curator Pablo León de la Barra spearheaded the exhibition Monumentos, antimonumentos y nueva escultura pública (Monuments, Antimonuments, and New Public Sculpture) in Zapopan and Mexico City, Mexico. The exhibition highlighted a number of Latin American artists’ engagements with the modernist monstrosities and hero cults of their city plazas.5 This vogue for intervention as a way of addressing everything from the racist and white supremacist to the anachronistic and “ugly” in our monuments provokes several

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questions: What is the relationship between institutionally sanctioned “defacements” of statues and the illegal graffiti and vandalism that sometimes precedes them? Is institutionally supported intervention a method of neutralizing or enfolding the critiques of those the law refers to as “vandals”? What aspects of history are highlighted and obscured by each intervention, and how does this differ from the monument itself? What are the strategies for intervention, and what makes each effective (or not)? Do temporary interventions have the power to shift the discourse of more permanent monuments? These are the questions that I explore with my students through a multiday, hands-on classroom project. Through the experience, teams of students grapple with history and public space, eventually proposing their own creative interventions into an existing monument. I originally used this project to introduce undergraduate students in my Death and Dying in Mexican Art course to the history of the 1968 Student Movement in Mexico City and its subsequent memorialization. I saw it as a way to have students engage deeply with a history that could, at first glance, be seen as distant from most of their lived experiences. I have also adapted the project to focus on the Antonin Mercié Robert E. Lee Monument (Richmond, Virginia, 1890) in my US and Caribbean Art: Race and Representation course. Yet the basic project outline below could be adapted to any monument and may even be more effective when applied to a local example, discussed in-person. I teach these courses using the principles of Team-Based Learning, in which students collaborate in the same team for the entire semester, building relationships with their classmates. They master basic concepts through introductory readings outside of class, so that in-class time can be used for hands-on, project-based learning.6

Project Outline 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Introduction to historical debates and monument in question Brainstorm: Strategies for intervention Brainstorm: Strengths and shortcomings of existing monument Teams develop proposals Teams present, answer questions, and vote on proposals Final reflection, with examples of actual interventions (if relevant)

Introduction to Historical Debates and Monument in Question The unit begins with students learning about basic historical frameworks through outof-class readings and an in-class quiz. When focusing on the monument to the Mexican student movement of 1968, the students read excerpts from one of its foundational texts, Elena Poniatowska’s La Noche de Tlatelolco/Massacre in Mexico (1971), and look at the accompanying photo essay.7 The text is a multi-vocal collage of newspaper clippings, interviews, poems, and the author’s own musings. It recounts the optimism of the students, who took to the streets of Mexico City in 1968 to demand democratic

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reforms and police accountability. It also reflects the terror and chaos of the evening of October 2, 1968, when government agents fired on peaceful protestors in Tlatelolco Square, killing dozens and imprisoning hundreds, or even thousands, more.8 When I focused on the Richmond, Virginia, Robert E. Lee Monument, students read an excerpt on the statue and its history from Kirk Savage’s Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in 19th-Century America.9 As they come into class, students turn in one lingering question, reflection, or point of confusion, and take a short quiz on the reading, first as individuals and then in their teams. I clarify lingering confusions from questions and the quiz, drawing on students’ expertise in addition to my own.

Brainstorm: Strategies for Intervention Each group compiles a list of strategies from Poniatowska’s text that they found effective in representing both the optimistic aims and violent end of the 1968 student movement. In the case of the Robert E. Lee Monument, students list aspects of the memorial that they find particularly egregious in supporting white supremacy. Then, we have a class discussion of these points, compiling a list of the salient strategies. For example, in Poniatowska’s essay on 1968 in Mexico City, students were struck by her use of repeated motifs, her appeals to all five senses, and her use of everyday objects such as shoes as a representation of the dead. The list of these representational strategies stays posted in the classroom for the remainder of the class.

Brainstorm: Strengths and Shortcomings of Existing Monument Next, I introduce students to the monument that currently stands in Tlatelolco Square in honor of the dead of 1968. A group of activists erected the Stela of Tlatelolco (Figure 2.1) in 1993 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the massacre. It is a modest memorial within the vast square. Like Poniatowska’s book, it is a collage: a mixture of preColumbian forms, covered with a low-relief carving of a student movement graphic, a poem, and a list of twenty of the dead. I ask students to brainstorm what they see as the strengths and shortcomings of the monument. In my most recent class, students argued that its shortcomings included the fact that “few names were included,” it seemed “unimaginative,” and that it “doesn’t say who was responsible.” In contrast, they also pointed out that the “steps seem to invite you in” and that its very existence is laudable. Then, I briefly present the major critiques of the Stela of Tlatelolco. Scholars and activists often discuss the monument as an absolutely inadequate memorial to a watershed moment in Mexican history. First, critics saw the Stela as a failure for bowing to the “official” count of the dead with its list of only twenty names, instead of the often-quoted 300 dead.10 Second, art critics and curators have lambasted the artistic failings of the Stela, calling it archaic and lacking potential for active engagement. For example, US-based art historian Robin Adèle Greeley stated that it “clings to heavy sculptural anachronisms and a rigid separation of object and viewer. An inert monolith

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Figure 2.1  Raúl Álvarez Garín (coordination), Arnulfo Aquino (design), and Salvador Pizarro (carving), Stela of Tlatelolco, 1993. Photograph by author.

reiterating the outmoded tenets of commemorative statues and plaques, it has proved unable to rejuvenate the plaza as a symbolic public space.”11 Similarly, Mexican curator and critic Cuauhtémoc Medina states, “It seems impossible that the current stela that commemorates the dead in Tlatelolco Square could, at some point, activate the social memory of 1968.”12 Furthermore, the monument is remote from the city center,

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allowing the gentrification of historic Mexico City to go on, its touristic destinations unbothered by the history of state violence.13 Much of my own writing on the Stela of Tlatelolco is based on reconsidering its “failure,” in light of the theories of José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam, who see failure as a locus of resistance, because “success” is defined within repressive (capitalist, racist, cisheteropatriarchal, colonial) systems, artistic or otherwise.14 I argue that the creation of a “successful” memorial in Tlatelolco Square would have been a public masquerade. Such a memorial would imply that the Mexican government had confessed to its violent acts, while, in fact, the government actively resisted such an admission by impeding the 1993 Truth Commission’s access to vital documents. I show how the monument serves as an important, if incomplete, archive of the dead in light of the failure of the Truth and Reconciliation process to produce such a list, and argue that it serves as a nexus and an altar within the vast Square: not artistically vanguard functions, but vital nonetheless.15 But, for the sake of the class, I let the critics win. De-centering my own expertise and opinions greatly helps to create a collaborative environment in which students feel empowered to speak out on the issue. Thus, I present the arguments for and against the monument but withhold my own point of view until the end of the project. Next, I provide examples of artist interventions in monuments. We discuss the tactics used by each artist and add these to our “strategies” list. One example is Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus (New York City, 2012), in which the artist built a living room around the Christopher Columbus sculpture high above Columbus Circle. After discussing the intervention in a recent class, we added the following strategies to our list: recontextualization, bringing the viewer into proximity with the “hero,” and removing the pedestal. Another is Ivan Argote’s Tourists (Bogotá, 2012), in which Argote dressed monumental public marble statues of Columbus and Isabella of Spain in cloth ponchos. Here, students pointed out the public art strategies of “reclaiming” the colonizer with a symbol of the colonized, juxtaposing materials and using humor. When we discussed the August 2017 vandalism of the Central Park Columbus statue (Jeronimo Suñol, New York, 1894) by anonymous activists, students noted the red paint thrown on his hands highlighted violence where it was obscured and used an instantly understandable symbol. They also observed that the intervention was made to be photographed and circulated on social media, and that it was a striking, succinct, and rapid way to intervene without permission. Finally, we discuss Krysztof Wodiczko’s Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection (New York, 2012), in which the artist projected videos of veterans of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan onto Henry Kirke Brown’s statue of Abraham Lincoln in Union Square. Students noted how the projections juxtapose the status and experiences of commanderin-chief and soldier, and layer different races, classes, and time periods on one surface. At this point in the unit, we have two lists displayed prominently in the classroom: “strategies” and “shortcomings.” The strategies list includes tactics that students responded positively to, both in the reading and in the brief presentation of other interventions. The shortcomings include critiques of the existing monument, from both the students and critics.

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Teams Develop Proposals Students now begin the project that we have been building toward throughout the subsequent activities. Each team of six to seven students is tasked with brainstorming possible interventions at the Stela of Tlatelolco or the Robert E. Lee Monument, and then developing one proposal, which they will present to their classmates as “the jury.” Students therefore need to develop a detailed plan that considers scale, location, and materials. I also encourage them to refer to the strategies and shortcomings lists in formulating an argument to justify their designs. After each team has collaborated to develop a basic concept for their intervention, I distribute brief descriptions of the responsibilities of “designers,” “publicists,” and “PR people.” Two or three “designers” on each team hone the vision and develop visual aids, “publicists” prepare the presentation for the jury, and “PR people” put together a list of responses to possible jury questions. Each team divides up these roles according to the strengths and interests of team members, while I also note that artists are often responsible for playing all three roles.

Teams Present, Answer Questions, and Vote on Proposals While their peers present, the other teams note the strengths and shortcomings of each proposal on a feedback sheet. Then, we end with a vote. I hand out ballots to each team member with the team’s number printed on them, so that students cannot vote for their own team’s proposal. After revealing the winning team (and, if appropriate, awarding extra credit to the winning team members), I lead a discussion of which strategies the students found the most compelling in their proposal and why. In the case of the Stela of Tlatelolco, my students’ proposals ranged from the dark and performative (having actors dressed as politicians, police officers, and soldiers wash the stela for twenty-four hours every October 2nd) to more optimistic (a garden in the plaza) and poetic (frosted glass walls to obscure the plaza, symbolic of the government obscuring what happened there). Some proposals featured many disparate elements and were clearly designed by committee. The strength of many of the interventions I showed in class, I believe, is their succinctness. If there is time, we reflect on the difficulties of the process, leading to a discussion of the challenges of public art. Students engage deeply with the activity, and the fact that they frame the issues and strategies themselves is key. This kind of student-centered learning fosters what educational researchers Randi Engle and Faith R. Conant call “productive disciplinary engagement” by encouraging students to take on intellectual projects, giving them the resources and authority to address such problems, and holding them accountable to their peers.16 It also requires students to practice the valuable “soft skills” of collaboration, consensus-building, creativity, and argumentation. These skills are vital on the current job market, as artificial intelligence or other technologies cannot replace them. I also have incorporated this type of activity, in which I present students with a real-world artistic challenge, in my introduction to art class on Auguste Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais (1884–95). Before we look at Rodin’s work, we read a short summary

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of Jean Froissart’s telling of the French Burghers’ self-effacing surrender to their English foes during the Hundred Year’s War. Then, each group brainstorms in response to the following questions: What feelings or morals are conveyed by the story? What are key moments in the narrative that sum up these sentiments? After this discussion, I have them do a “reverse visual analysis”: each group proposes a monument to the Burghers, describing the form, medium, poses, and scale in detail. We compare their proposals, which tend to be visions of strapping, shirtless Burghers, arms linked, marching toward their fate, though I have received abstract proposals on occasion. Then, we look at Rodin’s answer to the same problem. Students leave with an appreciation for the novelty of Rodin’s approach, and are better prepared to compare his work to a sculptural “norm” in their head.

Final Reflection, with Examples of Actual Interventions (if Relevant) To wrap up the unit, I introduce students to an artist who took on the same problem that they did. In her work Tlatelolco 1968/2008, Ximena Labra commissioned three archeological-grade copies of the Stela.17 Labra temporarily installed the replicas—she calls them “clones”—at prominent landmarks around Mexico City: first, alongside the original in Tlatelolco Square, then later in the Zócalo (main plaza) (Figure 2.2), in

Figure 2.2  Ximena Labra, Tlatelolco 1968/2008, 2008, intervention in the Zócalo, Mexico City. © Ximena Labra.

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front of the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Palace) (Figure 2.3), in the Insurgentes traffic circle, at the Monument to the Revolution, and on the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México campus.18 The monuments appeared and disappeared in these prominent spots, taking the Stela on what the artist called “a space odyssey,” a clear reference to director Stanley Kubrick’s mysterious monument in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Through her intervention, Labra questioned the peripheral nature of the 1968 monument, releasing this history from its confinement within Tlatelolco Square. By transporting the clones to major tourist sites and centers of state power, she also chipped away at the developmentalist narratives heralded by the Mexican government. Her work tarnishes state visions of “progress,” showing the dark underside of Mexico’s history at some of its most vaunted sites. Furthermore, by ironically treating a fifteenyear-old stela as if it were a precious archeological artifact, she highlighted the state’s selective conservation of the past.19 In class, we analyze the visual contrast between the Stela and the Monument to the Revolution. By setting up this juxtaposition, Labra calls attention to the state’s gargantuan embrace of the Mexican Revolution, while at the same time limiting more recent uprisings to the small, peripheral Stela. Labra’s work offers a new way of thinking through the problem my students faced: What if, instead of intervening in a monument to address its shortcomings, we make the monument itself mobile, so it can intervene in other sites, commenting on the

Figure 2.3  Ximena Labra, Tlatelolco 1968/2008, 2008, intervention in front of Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City. © Ximena Labra.

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memorial landscape of the city as a whole? Labra’s intervention, though sponsored by museum Memorial del 68, refused to be co-opted. The indirectness of its critique allowed it to receive the necessary government permissions for installation, while still functioning like the graffiti and vandalism on other structures around the city. Her work—and my students’ imaginative ideas when confronted with the same challenge— makes me optimistic about the potential for artistic interventions to retain a critical edge, and to highlight hidden histories.

Notes 1

2

3 4 5

6

7 8

Thank you to Anna Indych-López, Harriet F. Senie, Mary Coffey, and Katherine Manthorne for their thoughtful feedback on my ideas about Mexican public art. My research into Mexico City’s monuments received support from The Beinecke Scholarship for Graduate Study and an NEH Summer Institute, as well as Early Research Initiative, CLACLS, Marian Goodman Travel Fellowship, and Doctoral Student Research Grants from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. All translations are my own. For discussions of memorials and counter-monuments, see Erika Lee Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 20–30; James E. Young, “Countermonuments as Spaces for Deep Memory,” in Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era, eds. Diana I. Popescu and Tanja Schult, The Holocaust and Its Contents (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 44–52. Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, 1st ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 61–8. The statue was designed by German sculptor Ferdinand von Miller II and dedicated in 1894. Monuments Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, and Markers, “Report to the City of New York,” January 2018, 22. Ibid., 30. These works included: Eduardo Abaroa (Mexico), Obelisco roto portátil para mercados ambulantes (Portable Broken Obelisk for Outdoor Markets), 1991–3; Marcelo Cidade (Brazil) Monumento ao Monumento, 2010; and José Dávila (Mexico) Topologías de la memoria, 2017. For an excellent overview of Team-Based Learning, see Michael Sweet and Larry K. Michaelsen, Team-Based Learning in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Group Work That Works to Generate Critical Thinking and Engagement, 1st ed. (Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2012). Elena Poniatowska, La noche de Tlatelolco: testimonios de historia oral, 1st ed. (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1971); and Massacre in Mexico, trans. Helen R. Lane (New York: Viking Press, 1975). There is significant controversy over the number killed. In the aftermath of the attack, President Díaz Ordaz’s spokesman stated that seven people had died, then later raised the number to twenty. Kate Doyle, “The Dead of Tlatelolco: Using the Archives to Exhume the Past,” (Washington, DC: The National Security Archive, 2006). https:// nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB201/index.htm. Another government agency

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reported that twenty-six died, while Division General Javier Vázquez Félix, who was in charge of collecting the remains of the dead, cited forty-three. All figures from Sergio Aguayo, 1968: Los archivos de la violencia (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1998), 251, figure 15.2. Yet students in the plaza and residents of the surrounding apartment buildings reported seeing dozens of bodies, and activist accounts widely cite 300 deaths, a number that has been repeated so frequently that it has attained the weight of historical fact. 9 Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 129–42; 47–55. For an introductory-level text, you could alternatively assign Francis K. Pohl’s excerpt on the statue in Framing America: A Social History of American Art. Volume 1, c. 200 BCE-1900 (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2017). 10 Arnulfo Aquino Casas, “La creación de una estela,” Zurda 10 (1994): 86. 11 Robin Adèle Greeley, “The Perfomative Politicization of Public Space: Mexico 1968–2008–2012,” Thresholds 41 (Spring 2013): 24. 12 “Parecería imposible que la estela actual que conmemora a los fallecidos en la Plaza de Tlatelolco pudiera alguna vez activar la memoria social de 1968 … ” Cuauhtémoc Medina, “Un fantasma deambula por México: Tlatelolco 1968–2008,” in El orden invisible: Arte, escena y espacio público, ed. Juncia Avilés Cavasola, Memoria de los 40 años del movimiento estudiantil del 68 (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2010), 41. 13 José Ramón Ruisánchez Serra levels this criticism at the Memorial museum in Tlatelolco Square, and I extend it to the Stela. José Ramón Ruisánchez Serra, “Reading ’68: The Tlatelolco Memorial and Gentrification in Mexico City,” in Accounting for Violence: Marketing Memory in Latin America, eds. Ksenija Bilbija and Leigh A. Payne, The Cultures and Practice of Violence series (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 14 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, Sexual Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 88; Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 15 Mya Dosch, “Creating 1968: Art, Architecture and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement,” PhD diss. (The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2018). 16 Randi A. Engle and Faith R. Conant, “Guiding Principles for Fostering Productive Disciplinary Engagement: Explaining an Emergent Argument in a Community of Learners Classroom,” Cognition and Instruction 20, no. 4 (2002): 229. 17 The following year, Labra made a film from the documentary photographs and video for the installation, with the title Tlatelolco: Public Space Odyssey. The documentary footage is interspersed with clips of the stela from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the clip of the Gorieta de los Insurgentes from Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), and images of the Mexican student movement and its aftermath from El grito (1968) and Oscar Menéndez’s La historia de un documento (1970). 18 Ximena Labra, interview with the author, Mexico City, August 1, 2016. 19 Dosch, “Creating 1968: Art, Architecture and the Afterlives of the Mexican Student Movement.”

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Mapping Art on Campus By Annie Dell’Aria

Introduction The design of the contemporary American college campus reflects a number of priorities: cultivating an atmosphere of learning, connecting spaces to the institution’s history, and (increasingly) branding an experience to market to prospective students and their families. Public art can operate within this space to lend prestige to the institution, create locations for meetings or campus traditions, or—in the best instances—generate new forms of exchange and conversation among members of campus and local communities. Like most art placed in public spaces, however, more often than not campus public art goes unnoticed in the daily life and movements of students, faculty, and staff, aside from the rare, yet highly publicized, moments of controversy over public art’s commissioning or removal. Making public art visible again, even if only for brief moments at a time, might not only invite more members of the public to engage with works of art but also raise important questions about representation in public space in the context of higher education. Through locating, researching, and mapping campus public art, students can critically understand how artworks placed in public spaces operate within the educational, institutional, and social structures of a college campus. In this chapter, I detail a project conducted in one of my upper-level art history courses at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Throughout the course, students created an interactive, online map that linked points on campus where public art could be found with student-created entries and research. Through this process students engaged in field research locating artworks around campus, archival investigation in various university repositories, spatial thinking through a digital humanities project, and critical reflection on their own campus environment. In what follows, I outline the assignment’s scaffolded structure and related assignments, the end result, the missteps that could use improvement, and possibilities for the future. This chapter offers both a case study and a blueprint for assignments that encourage students to rethink and critique their own institutional surroundings as a means of producing more engaged and inclusive spaces of learning. Teachable monuments, in other words, can arise out of the mundane as much as out of controversy. Teaching students to take an interest in the

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art, landscape, and built environment that surround them can cultivate precisely the kind of nuanced critical thinking about public space that is missing in the oftentimes reductive debates over public art in the media.

Combating the Immateriality of Art History Education The typical art history course happens through reproductions: at home students pour over color images in textbooks or online, and in class they scrutinize enlarged and projected slides at the front of the room. Art is dissected but rendered flat, immaterial, and separate from students’ visual and material surroundings. Trips to museums and galleries, the highlight of any class that has the time and funds to conduct them, alleviate some of this mystification, but objects are still often isolated, making spatial distances, networks, and overlaps difficult for students to comprehend. Digital mapping projects can reframe course content and narrative innovatively, by asking students to think about time and space in relationship to course materials in new ways. In the study of art history, grasping the spatio-temporal context of objects is crucial to breaking past an ahistorical, detached aesthetic observation. Duke University art historian Caroline Bruzelius and multimedia analyst Hannah L. Jacobs were particularly interested in impressing upon students the networks and simultaneities of art objects, places, and events in their global survey class, breaking with the linearity of the traditional syllabus and survey textbook. Employing the web-publishing platform Omeka and its timeline-generating plug-in Neatline, they restructured courses around a “living” syllabus, producing an interactive, iterative resource that brought objects out from the textbook reproduction and into “a system of learning in which [the class] engaged with the materiality of the object and its life from creation to collection.”1 Other art history instructors have used this technology and other mapping platforms, such as Google Maps or ArcGIS, to similarly create student-generated geographic visualizations of course material through locating places represented in particular artworks, sites of origin, or present repositories.2 These projects require technological as well as historical instruction in the classroom and often are aided by collaboration with digital learning and library staff. The study of public art poses even further challenges, as the classroom slide projection is seemingly divorced from both the artworks and their important spatial contexts. Classes taught in cities like New York, where I was fortunate enough to attend graduate school, do not have to worry as much about this limitation, but for campuses outside of urban centers, this distance can become a challenge. One solution, then, is to incorporate the local as much as possible. Getting students to engage local public art, especially in the context of a university campus, can do a number of things: spark experiential learning, engage and even provide service for the surrounding community, and prompt critical awareness of how institutions of higher education signal prestige.3 In an especially inspired collaborative pedagogical project by Jennifer Borland and Louise Siddons at Oklahoma State University, students in an introductory and upperlevel course collaborated to examine the recent placement of a replica of Frederick

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Remington’s 1895 cowboy sculpture Bronco Buster in downtown Stillwater, Oklahoma. The project asked students to interrogate how public art functioned in their immediate surroundings and in the social, political, and economic context of the community. The project’s stated goals were both to “create an active learning environment in which students were empowered to relate historical material to their lived experience; and … to invite [their] students to see themselves as knowledgeable actors and responsible participants in the public sphere.”4 Engendering learning experiences where students can engage course content in their lived experience and gain a sense of expertise or ownership of cultural production is a core part of my teaching philosophy. Finding ways to incorporate public art into this process posed an exciting opportunity. I structured my course’s main assignments around merging these two concepts—mapping as an art historical tool and engagement with local public art—by starting with the unnoticed sculptures and artworks that peppered campus. Without the ready-made controversy of a public art current event such as the Remington sculpture in Stillwater or the numerous battles over historical monuments in urban centers across the country or on campuses such as University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, generating a meaningful experience with public art in my campus’s own community of Oxford, Ohio, posed a challenge. Many of the works in question (at least upon first glance) are somewhat unremarkable abstract sculptures and named memorials. Instead of focusing on a major controversy, I started with a simple question: Where is public art on our campus? Out of this question came a number of lines of inquiry and debates that enriched our conversation of art in public spaces throughout the semester and caused students to rethink their everyday surroundings.

The Assignment Starting with the public art collection on my own campus at Miami University, I wanted both to find ways to gain knowledge about these artworks and to generate vehicles for active learning experiences and primary research by my students. Miami University, though rich in campus public art, has no central resource for locating it on campus or online. The public art in the Miami University Art Museum (MUAM) Sculpture Park is the only exception, but these works are relatively self-contained on the museum’s grounds on the corner of campus.5 In short, public art on campus was a decentralized and under-appreciated collection of artworks, and an untapped opportunity for student and community engagement. The class in question was a new upper-level special topics course, “Art Outdoors: Site and Place.” The relatively small class had sixteen students, and from the beginning I wanted to incorporate more active learning projects that prompted student thinking about public art from spatial, embodied, institutional, and political lenses as well as historical and aesthetic ones. The final assignment for the course would attempt to fill an institutional gap by providing a public art resource and answer my central question: Where is public art on campus?

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The map, complete with individual entries on each work, was the culminating final project, but it was scaffolded throughout the semester.6 Below is a rough outline of the basic components of the assignment and how they built upon each other and overlapped with class content throughout the semester. At each point, I provided feedback, and students shared their work with each other through informal class discussion and peer review.

Defining Public Art and Finding It on Campus After an initial week reading and discussing what constitutes public art, we generated a list of things we would and would not be mapping. Through class discussion students worked through the spaces and types of objects that would constitute public art for our map and what possible other categories could form a second map. Significant buildings, for example, were broken down into Bell Towers (which would be included) and other architectural monuments such as iconic arches or towers on classroom buildings or dorms (which would not). There are also a number of memorial plaques scattered around campus, often situated next to rocks, trees, or benches that students decided not to include both because there were far too many of them and because they did not seem to participate within the same aesthetic category of “art” as the other objects. We then divided up a map of campus, and I assigned each portion of campus to a pair of students to explore. They charted the location, object, and any available plaque information of any works of art they came across in a shared spreadsheet. In the class conversation that followed, we discussed the placement of works, many of which were thematically linked, such as Quest (2003), Bruce Beasley’s bronze abstraction of the scientific process outside of the Chemistry and Biochemistry building, or Flux (2017), a mural-like porcelain mosaic of landscapes and geological surfaces in the atrium of the building that houses the Department of Geology and Environmental Earth Science. We also discussed why certain areas of campus may have had more public art than others, as well as additional methodological challenges when students came across objects that did not easily fit into our categorizations of public art, such as art in hallways of buildings, classrooms, or semi-public spaces. In addition to these conversations derived from fieldwork, I assigned readings and showed examples from other universities that explicitly engaged the social and political implications of campus artworks.7 These helped to frame our conversations and their own thinking about the project.

Understanding and Applying Research Methods Students then had separate orientation sessions with the university archives and the Center for Digital Scholarship at the library.8 In the former, they learned the procedures for conducting archival research as well as knowledge about what resources the library had to offer. This kind of open communication with library staff encourages undergraduates to conduct more primary research and overcome their hesitancy with archives.9 In the latter, they received a hands-on tutorial for using Omeka and

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Neatline—open source platforms that were the backbone of the online map. These orientation sessions exposed students to the project’s methods for research and knowledge production, which were very different from those they used in many of their other classes. Students produced outlines and annotated bibliographies for their artworks in early stages that laid out both the basic “tombstone” information for each work that would be input into Omeka and what significant resources they located. Students were also invited to voice any difficulties in finding information at this point so that I could point them in the right direction. The hurdles to conducting research on relatively unknown works of public art in a decentralized collection at a public institution proved incredibly instructive, both in terms of developing an understanding of public art and in terms of a more metacognitive apprehension of the research process. First, the process introduced students to the various networks of government, university, and private moneys involved in public art commissioning processes. Unlike a named collection like the Stuart Collection at UC San Diego, Miami’s public art collection is relatively un-curated, campus-wide (again, save for the museum’s sculpture garden). There are artworks commissioned through Ohio’s Percent for Art initiatives, gifted to the university by private donors, integrated into the museum’s collection through the MUAM Sculpture Park, funded by fraternities and sororities, connected to special “millennium” funds from the president’s office, and made to commemorate historical events or figures through memorials designed by the campus architect. Second, through the project’s often circuitous research process, students came to understand research as a discursive practice. Since relatively little published information exists about many of the works, students had to reach outside of the internet and library-bound research methods with which they were accustomed. Students learned to conduct research in archives, which illuminated the institutional gaps in information as much as it afforded them a wealth of material to mine for their projects. Students also communicated (by phone, email, and appointment) with members of the campus community and frequently the artists themselves. They were able to engage with these stakeholders and gain deeper knowledge of artworks and new vantage points on public art and its processes. Each student’s research narrative contributed to a sense of ownership they seemed to take in their research, their assigned artworks, and broader campus space as the semester progressed.

Watching Public Art In Situ Taking inspiration from Harriet F. Senie’s long-running “public art watch” class assignment, I also asked students to spend at least one hour on three different occasions (at different times of day) with one of their assigned artworks.10 During this time, students would note how passersby did or did not interact with their works of art and engage willing participants in conversations. We developed a series of questions together as a class, but each interview was meant to be informal and guided by what viewers noticed or found relevant. Students then shared their findings with the class through presentations and produced short papers.

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Students often discussed feeling slightly uncomfortable standing and observing in a place where people are constantly moving, but through this discomfort came some fascinating revelations.11 Spending hours next to Richard Hunt’s abstract Hybrid Construction (1983–4), a work in the MUAM Sculpture Park, one student did not come across a single passerby on foot, prompting a reflection on the work’s placement in relationship to speeds of movement (it is located in grass near a main road) as well as a deeper look at its rusted Cor-Ten steel surface. By contrast students stationed in more heavily trafficked parts of campus considered other forms of invisibility. Glyphic (1972–3), an abstract stone carving by Jarrett Hawkins, is located in a space called “The Hub” in the main quad of campus. It sits in between pathways that radiate out from the bronze university seal, perhaps the most iconic piece of art on campus with its own superstition that students should not step on it lest they fail their next exam. Despite the heavy foot traffic and multiple tours visiting the seal, virtually no one took time to notice Glyphic, prompting the student to investigate the work further and interview the artist. The student discovered that the work was initially meant to be taller and proposed that repositioning benches in the area would direct more attention toward the work. In other instances, students’ mere presence near an object signaled to passersby that they were near an artwork, as with Danielle Wagner’s Luxembourg x Luxembourg (2001), a box-like Cor-Ten sculpture of interlocking L-shaped blocks situated outside of the Global Initiatives office and referencing the university’s satellite campus in Luxembourg. Many passersby thought the object was an electrical box or some other utilitarian object and only came to discuss it as art through the student’s presence.

Related Assignments and Class Discussion As students worked on this project, the class covered a number of significant issues and debates in public art, including: the public sculpture revival in the 1960s; major controversies over removal or destruction, such as Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (1981–9), Rachel Whiteread’s House (1993–4), and the recent arguments over Confederate monuments; the rise of social practice and relational aesthetics; land art; critical approaches toward contemporary memorials; broader issues in representation and inclusion; and practical concerns regarding funding and maintenance. Throughout the course of the semester, I encouraged students to connect their own research to the class discussion. For example, abstract sculptures by major contemporary artists like Mark di Suvero and Ursula von Rydingsvaard, both donated to the university by the same benefactor, were discussed in the context of blue-chip public sculpture and prestige; Nancy Holt’s Star-Crossed (1979) connected to our consideration of land art and sitespecificity as well as challenges in preservation; and Robert Keller’s amphitheater design for Freedom Summer Memorial (2000), which commemorated the tragic deaths of three Civil Rights activists trained on what was formerly Western College for Women in the summer of 1964, was discussed in terms of both its relationship to memorial architecture and issues of community and representation. We also were fortunate to be able to meet with visiting artist Ursula von Rydingsvaard when she came to campus

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Figure 3.1  Ursula von Rydingsvaard, Heart in Hand, 2014, bronze, installed at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, 2017. Photograph by author.

for the dedication of a recently acquired edition of her bronze sculpture Heart in Hand (2014) (Figure 3.1). In short, the local research students were conducting throughout the term was not seen as a separate service project but interwoven into a class that dealt with major works of public art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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I also gave students specific weekly prompts for blog entries connecting to that week’s topic, bridging their research for the project or broader consideration of space and place on campus. Two key experiential assignments for blog posts specifically complemented the public art watch and students’ interrogation of how space operates on campus. The goal in these projects, as well as with the map, is to create situations where students see their everyday spaces in new lights and thereby to understand how space and place are shaped by physical, social, cultural, and personal forces. For one of the posts, students worked in pairs to detail observations of places on campus with which one was familiar and the other was not. The resulting posts and responses detailed what aspects of a place become familiar or unfamiliar to a new or habitual visitor. For another post, I asked students to conduct a dérive, a kind of unstructured “drifting” through space theorized by Guy Debord and employing the Situationist International’s concept of psychogeography.12 Without the urban setting of the original dérive, students followed sounds, colors, or games of chance to redirect their movements through campus space. Each student wrote a creative post responding to this experience with photographs taken along the way. Like the public art map, these projects attuned students to the spaces around them, often causing them to notice things they had not before and recognize what types of movements through space led them to feel slightly uncomfortable. In deviating from their everyday movements through campus, they both saw its spaces anew and came to recognize (and sometimes transgress) its previously unnoticed conventions, expectations, and boundaries between public and private spaces.

Synthesizing Findings through Writing Working through each step of archival, secondary, and on-site research, students began to produce two written pieces on each work of art: a brief 150-word paragraph written in the style of a museum wall label and a longer 500-word entry modeled on resources like the Oxford Dictionary of Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art. Writing the brief label text trained students in being clear and concise, skills traditional college papers often fail to develop. The longer entries were still written for a general reader but expanded on the artwork, looking at its physical form, its content, its art historical context, its commission, and its later life. These pieces of writing went through multiple drafts and revisions, both with input from myself and through in-class peer review. Students also conducted reflections on their individual research processes and their developing understanding of public art on campus and more widely. These reflection papers allowed students to be more informal, include things they did not think were appropriate for a general audience, and consider the process of learning itself. I summarize key findings from these reflections in my conclusion.

Map and Walking Tour The culmination of the project was the production of the map itself, which can be navigated by clicking on points of a digital map that open up the wall label text and

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Figure 3.2  Students with Mark di Suvero, For Kepler, 1995, at the conclusion of the culminating walking tour, May 14, 2018. Photograph by author.

tombstone information. Clicking on a link for further information takes users to a static page with the longer entry by each student.13 The end result was not as smooth and polished as I hoped, but the final project did create a culminating experience that departed from traditional final exams, papers, or presentations. During our final exam session, students participated in a walking tour of campus where each student presented on at least one of their artworks (there was not sufficient time to discuss every piece). The walking tour, something I plan to fold into future assignments earlier in the semester, generated a sense of camaraderie and was arguably the highlight of the entire class (Figure 3.2).

Takeaways and Conclusions By applying interactive mapping assignments to students’ immediate surroundings, the mapping project became less of a projection of abstractions onto a spatial terrain, like many other excellent digital art history assignments, and more of a tracing of understudied and unnoticed objects in students’ daily movements and physical environs. Using the same terms, analyses, and systems of knowledge applied to the

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more canonical works studied in the classroom, students were able to produce original analyses of understudied artworks in their campus community. There were, however, some limitations and missteps in the project. Producing a workable website that I felt confident sharing with the public proved more challenging than I imagined. Working with open source digital platforms is risky and glitchy. Omeka’s set fields for data entry mapped rather clunkily onto the categories we desired for our artworks, and Neatline’s various stages of inputting data proved a bit more unwieldy and difficult for students to navigate than I anticipated. Furthermore, uploading images so that their orientation was correct proved a challenge. Using other platforms in the future might make the final product more polished. Another key pitfall to realizing a workable public resource was the variability in student performance. As is the case with nearly any assignment, some entries exhibited deeper research and more meticulous revisions than others. There is also always the risk that not all students will finish the class or complete all the assignments, leading to gaps in the final product. I would recommend prioritizing and enforcing fact-checking, revisions, and user-testing at every stage of the project for anyone wishing to conduct a similar project that results in a polished public website. Despite these logistical pitfalls related to the digital humanities component of the assignment, I found the project overall was a success, something I base more on student response and pedagogical outcomes than an online public resource ready at semester’s end. Students earnestly pursued research much earlier in the semester than with many previous research papers I have assigned. This led to more informed final projects, engagement with a wider range of research materials, and a more nuanced understanding of research processes. In the reflection papers, many students not only detailed the narrative of their research process, including its challenges, but most also commented on how the project afforded them a “deeper” level of research than other projects, often citing the conversations they had with artists, archivists, and university staff and faculty. Although many mentioned the lack of publicized or online materials as a challenge or frustration, the experience working on-site with artworks and with archives and artists gave students a sense of ownership of their projects. Student reflection papers also suggested that the experience was perhaps more impactful than a traditional research project in developing their understanding of public art and the spaces around them. Many students thought critically about how campus spaces are inherently political and designed for projecting an image of prestige and success, such as the seal or “Tri-Delt Sundial” that features prominently in photographs of the campus online and in brochures. They also commented on omissions as much as trends, suggesting that there should be more artworks that take on difficult topics or engage student voices, particularly those from underrepresented groups. Many students also reflected on how the project taught them how important seemingly invisible “in-between” spaces are, and how they hoped to go through public spaces more intentionally in the future. In sum, the project interactively achieved many of my learning objectives for the class. As this project demonstrates, engaging local public art materializes issues and images discussed in the classroom and generates valuable opportunities for primary research

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and critical engagement with students’ surroundings. These learning experiences can be achieved without a particularly noteworthy controversy or proximity to well-known works of art. Having students map the under-documented and often invisible objects that inhabit campus spaces allows them to engage their local surroundings, conduct original research, and unpack the intricacies of the processes of creating, maintaining, and interacting with art in public spaces.

Notes 1

2

3 4

5 6

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Caroline Bruzelius and Hannah Jacobs, “The Living Syllabus: Rethinking the Introductory Course to Art History with Interactive Visualization,” Art History Pedagogy & Practice 2, no. 1 (July 12, 2017), accessed August 15, 2019, https:// academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/vol2/iss1/5. Christina M. Spiker, “Navigating Space and Place: Digital Cartography in the Classroom,” Art History Teaching Resources (blog), March 31, 2017, accessed August 15, 2019, http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/2017/03/navigating-space-and-placedigital-cartography-in-the-classroom/; and Rhonda Reymond, “Google Map Project,” Art History Teaching Resources (blog), January 11, 2019, accessed August 15, 2019, http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/2019/01/google-map-project/. Martin Zebracki, Ann Sumner, and Elaine Speight, “(Re)Making Public Campus Art: Connecting the University, Publics and the City,” Public Art Dialogue 7, no. 1 (2017): 6–43. Jennifer Borland and Louise Siddons, “Yay or Neigh? Frederic Remington’s Bronco Buster, Public Art, and Socially-Engaged Art History Pedagogy,” Art History Pedagogy & Practice 3, no. 1 (January 13, 2019), accessed August 15, 2019, https:// academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/vol3/iss1/5. “Sculpture Park | Art Museum | CCA,” Miami University, accessed January 16, 2019, https://miamioh.edu/cca/art-museum/collections/sculpture-park/index.html. For a discussion of how this works in more traditional research papers, see Annie Dell’Aria, “The Scaffolded Research Paper,” Art History Teaching Resources (blog), June 4, 2016, accessed August 15, 2019, http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/2016/06/ the-scaffolded-research-paper/. Specific readings covering campus public art, student engagement, and higher education politics were Zebracki, Sumner, and Speight, “(Re)Making Public Campus Art: Connecting the University, Publics and the City”; Grant Kester, “Waterworks: Politics, Public Art, and the University Campus,” in A Companion to Public Art, eds. Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie (New York: Wiley, 2016), 191–204. We also discussed Claes Oldenberg’s Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks (1969) at Yale University and George Segal’s Abraham and Isaac: In Memory of May 4, 1970, Kent State University (1978–9) at Princeton University in other course readings and class discussions. This technical support was particularly helpful for me, as I was also relatively unfamiliar with these platforms, but with advanced preparation and the assigning of online tutorials, instructors could still create an assignment like this even without the institutional support my class was fortunate to have.

50 9 10

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Teachable Monuments Greg Johnson, “Introducing Undergraduate Students to Archives and Special Collections,” College & Undergraduate Libraries 13, no. 2 (July 18, 2006): 91–100. Cher Krause Knight and Harriet F. Senie, “Introduction,” in A Companion to Public Art (New York: Wiley, 2016), 4; and Harriet Senie, “Reframing Public Art: Audience Use, Interpretation, and Appreciation,” in Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium, ed. Andrew McClellan (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 185–200. The social discomfort that came with standing next to seemingly in-between spaces on campus, much like the ambiguity of the research process in its first stages, can be described as a liminal state in threshold concept theory. A threshold concept, described by Jan H.F. Meyer and Ray Land, is “a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something … a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.” Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: An Introduction,” in Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge, eds. Jan Meyer and Ray Land (New York: Routledge, 2006), 3. Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive (1958),” in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, revised and expanded edition (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006). Art on Campus at Miami University, accessed October 26, 2020, https://artoncampus. lib.miamioh.edu/neatline/show/art-on-campus-at-miami-university.

4

Moving beyond “Pale and Male”: A Museum Educator’s Approach to the Campus Portrait Debate By Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye

Introduction As communities around the United States have begun to reflect more critically on the sculptures in their urban environments in the early twenty-first century, college and university campuses have also begun to embark on this process.1 In addition to three-dimensional statuary, the focus of campus debate has also confronted oil portraits of alumnae, faculty, leadership, and donors.2 Places of higher education have a long-standing tradition of filling their common areas, auditoriums, dining halls, and conference rooms with oil portraits. This custom of depicting past leaders and benefactors on canvas stems from a sixteenth-century European predilection for commemorating important people by visually representing them on the walls. At Oxford University, for example, a portrait of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey was painted to honor his founding gift that established Cardinal College (now Christ Church) in 1525.3 As the British began to found colleges in the colonies in the New World, such as Harvard in 1636 and Yale in 1701, this practice continued and expanded over time. Commissioning portraits of esteemed university leaders has since spread throughout the country, and continues, usually unquestioned, even today. This long and distinguished tradition has been so ingrained in the institution that for many students, faculty, and staff, the portraits fade into the background as innocuous decorative elements. For some individuals, the portraits signify the hallowed history of these institutions of higher learning or serve as friendly representations of their future aspirations. Yet, as the demographics of many colleges and universities become more diverse, the presence of these portraits may have unintended consequences. For some constituents, the portraits are visual reminders of an exclusionary past that intentionally and unintentionally limited the participation of women and people of color.4 These highly visible renditions of “too male, too pale, and too frail” leaders simultaneously reinforce the sense of the academic environment as a “white space” and fail to provide many students of color with a vision of their future selves.5 This sense of

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a “white space” was exacerbated at the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) by the fact that many of the trainees and emerging faculty did not know the history of the individuals on the wall, and therefore their complex biographies were reduced to their visible race. At the same time, the question remains: If you do not see yourself reflected on the walls, can you imagine yourself in that position of power?

Context Over the last few years at Yale University, student protests and staff activism have forced the university to contend with its complicated past. From the renaming of Calhoun College to strip the college of its namesake—one of the staunchest supporters of slavery and white supremacy—to the smashing of a dining hall stained glass window depicting an African American couple picking cotton, events on campus revealed a grassroots-driven need for a learning environment that reflects the current values of its constituents. Yale University is situated within New Haven, a city composed of predominantly non-white and low- to middle-income communities.6 The townand-gown dynamic becomes particularly challenging in areas like health care, where the Yale New Haven Health System treats many patients in the city. Historically, generations of largely white, male physicians were trained to be leaders in medicine within the diverse context of New Haven with limited reflection on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.7 Today, the YSM and the various departments within it have sought to recruit trainees and faculty of color while simultaneously developing educational initiatives to address the complicated relationship between race and medicine.8 One of the departments leading these efforts is the Psychiatry Department, which has incorporated a Social Justice and Health Equity track into its curriculum for Psychiatry Residents.9 Residents are doctors who have received their medical degrees but are receiving further training within a specialization. In the Psychiatry Department, addressing the hierarchies of power in the medical field and the needs of a diverse patient population is accomplished by weaving the strands of social justice and advocacy work throughout the fabric of the training. The result is that recent trainees and faculty are not only emerging leaders in the field of equity and diversity but are also co-authoring academic papers with community members in New Haven.10 Despite the Department’s work to diversify its colleagues and recalibrate the curriculum, the central-shared academic space—the conference room—still reflected the “pale and male” portraits of the past. This discrepancy came to light most clearly in a departmental town hall held in January 2016. The conference room holds around twenty people around a large oval table and originally had six oil portraits of former white chairmen hanging on the walls. As the only elements in the visual field of the conference room, the portraits often dominated over meetings, including trainee interviews, faculty promotion, social gatherings, and Resident trainings. Furthermore, these portraits were the only artworks depicting people on the walls of shared academic space in the building, as the other spaces were either left

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blank or contained abstract art. Therefore, these portraits, the only means of visually displaying the Department’s values, did not reinforce the value the Department placed on supporting diversity.11 To contend with this issue, the Psychiatry Department’s Diversity Task Force created an Art Committee in June 2016. Its main goal was to reimagine the conference room as a space that reflected the present values of the Department while retaining its historical underpinning. The current chair, Dr. John Krystal, articulated his vision of instilling the space with a “friendly gravitas” appropriate to the variety of activities in the room. The Art Committee consisted of a representative from each of the major constituencies of the Psychiatry Department, including faculty, staff, and trainees, and a museum professional (myself). My role in the committee was to bring art historical knowledge, perspectives from the museum field, and curatorial experience to the project. As a museum educator, I advocated for an audience-driven method for facilitating conversations that ensured we achieved the goals of the sessions yet were nimble enough to move where the participants guided us. My training in describing art objects from multiple perspectives, including considerations of the artist, subject matter, material, history, style, and viewer reception over time, among other aspects, aided these conversations. As a team, we embarked on a mission to catalog the paintings, research the sitters, and evaluate existing approaches to similar challenges within Yale and at other universities.12 The latter in particular highlighted the need to start an honest dialogue by bringing different stakeholders together for a conversation. We sought to create a “brave space” for all members in the Department to feel like they could speak freely regardless of the power dynamics present in the hierarchical structure of the Department. One of the ways we facilitated dialogue was through a workshop that used low-tech materials and question-based prompts. We brought in common tools of the museum educator, including post-it notes, markers, and large poster boards, to initiate the brainstorming. The workshop titled “Art or Artifact?” drew approximately twenty participants, including trainees, faculty, and staff. The event was advertised through a department-wide email to the above constituents.

Lesson Plan The program began with a brief overview of my work as a museum educator at the Yale Center for British Art. Over the last decades, the Center has been working to thoughtfully reconsider its depictions of people of African descent, who are commonly represented either as enslaved or in servitude. As a significant portion of our collection comes from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the museum has a number of paintings of sitters who either participated in or profited from slavery.13 In thinking about how our own university benefited from systems of oppression, I foregrounded a 1708 painting of the University’s namesake, Elihu Yale, that commemorated a marriage contract between his daughter Anne and William Cavendish while an enslaved servant of African descent, presumably owned by the second Duke of Devonshire,

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Figure 4.1  Unknown artist, eighteenth century, Elihu Yale; William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an enslaved servant, c. 1708, oil on canvas. Yale Center for British Art, Gift of Andrew Cavendish, eleventh Duke.

served the men madeira wine (Figure 4.1). Teaching from this artwork, I encouraged Yale participants in the workshop to consider the inherited advantages they receive as part of the university and to reflect on how their patients may view them as part of the hierarchical medical system. By introducing an overtly problematic portrait of the University’s founder into the conversation, I sought to situate the Department’s paintings in a longer lineage as well as signal my experience facilitating difficult conversations. Following the brief presentation, I directed the participants’ attention to the large pieces of paper on the walls. At the top of each sheet were written the following categories: “conference room,” “chairman portrait,” and “stakeholder.” Participants spent five minutes writing down anything that came to mind and then placed their post-it notes on the corresponding sheet. For “Conference room,” participants described the multitude of uses for the space. For the “Chairman portrait,” people were encouraged to write any association that they had with the portraits. Finally, for “Stakeholder,” we hoped to elicit the range of people who used the conference room.

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Having gathered everyone’s thoughts in an anonymous and impromptu fashion, we  then invited participants to find a partner. In their pairs, they selected one or two post-it notes from each category. They could select room uses, purposes, and constituents that aligned with one another, or they could choose ones that seemed to conflict. We encouraged them to think about the associations that the portraits may have, and how those connotations might impact the participants in the conference room during different activities. They discussed their selection with their partner before opening the conversation to the larger group. This format was particularly successful because the post-it note thoughts were created anonymously. Participants were free to write their reflections without concern that their ideas would reflect negatively on them as individuals. This anonymity was especially critical for the trainees and early stage faculty members whose current situation and future career often rely on the departmental leadership. The grouping into pairs was another way we mitigated against individuals feeling that they expressed only their personal concerns. Finally, the ability to select and combine the post-its from each category empowered the pairs to shape the conversation according to their own viewpoints while not requiring them to produce the ideas themselves. Instead, we placed priority on the group-generated reflections on the categories, which the pairs could shape according to their level of comfort in discussing the portraits. When the small group discussions concluded, I invited the pairs to share the post-its that they had chosen and what came up in their discussion. We prompted them to highlight the impact that the possible portrait associations might have on stakeholders during a particular room usage. They also had the opportunity to bring up any scenarios that were not present in the post-it notes. The pairs delved directly into the conversation with combinations like “debate,” “intimidation,” and “students/ recruits.” With this grouping of words, the participants discussed how the portraits might stifle debate because of their intimidating presence for trainees. This led to another discussion around the words “uncomfortable” and “intellectually honest,” and raised the question about whether it is possible to think freely in an atmosphere of discomfort. Another pair chose the words “smug,” “white man club,” and “belonging/ want to belong.” This group articulated the tension between the desire to feel part of the Department, while the visual messaging in this multi-purpose room suggests an exclusive and homogeneous group of powerful white men. As an important counterpoint to these comments, some faculty voiced the perspective that these portraits represented mentors, friends, and colleagues. Some people also expressed that these people made critical contributions to the mental health professional and local communities. This led to other trainees sharing their opinion that these portraits are an important part of the Department’s history and serve an aspirational purpose for them. Other trainees further relayed the fact that they benefit from many privileges as Residents at Yale compared with the rest of the New Haven community, and that these men laid the foundations for both their personal success and contributions toward the larger society. When the conversation shifted to the importance of psychological safety for trainees and faculty of color, who had

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previously felt intimidated by the portraits, one member of the Department brought an international perspective. The individual conveyed that they had been raised in an urban environment with actual threats of physical violence and this resulted in a feeling of psychological unsafety. The participant shared this lived experience to try to understand how a physically safe environment, yet with portraits of white men, could trigger a similar emotional response. What is the responsibility of the Department to create psychological safety in its physical environments, and for whom? The workshop created the conditions for a frank conversation among stakeholders with various perspectives on what the portraits represent within the many functions of the conference room. The brief presentation established my experience in facilitation about artworks and set the framework for the discussion to follow. The individual, anonymous notes expressed through a low-tech method and the subsequent one-onone discussions gave the participants the agency to shape the conversation. These two elements of the workshop resulted in trainees, faculty, and staff feeling open to share a range of perspectives, many of which contradicted one another. Although their ideas differed, the members of the Department listened to each other and trusted the process. Following the workshop, the Committee regrouped to work on a proposal based on the input of the constituents. We sought to lessen the feeling of the conference room as a “white space” while presenting a nuanced history of the Department’s leadership. We synthesized the ideas and set out a plan to display one portrait at a time, fleshing out the complicated biography of each chairman in text, and including additional images of more diverse colleagues in his professional orbit and people who continue the legacy of his work in the Department today. This approach would help us move beyond the “pale and male” stereotype by acknowledging the collective efforts of the Department and by including visual reflections of current trainees, faculty, and staff. The Town Hall held by the Art Committee on March 23, 2018, to present the proposal to the Psychiatry Department to invite further comment and conversation has since shaped the direction of the Committee’s thinking. While this proposal has yet to be executed, the Committee thinks it offers a possible direction to the portrait debate on campuses today. The challenges to implementation are varied but can be synthesized into a few main areas. First, the Psychiatry Department has a range of competing priorities, including staffing, recruitment, retention, as well as clinical and scientific responsibilities. Second, the trainee population turns over roughly every four years, so that Residents today may not have been part of the initial survey, workshop, or town hall. This gap in the historical memory is intensified by the fact that the portraits have been down for over a year.14 Third, the Committee had taken a hiatus after the town hall due to work schedules and, for myself, increasing participation on the executive committee on the YSM Committee for Art in Public Spaces, which formed in Winter 2018. However, as an intermediate step, we have included additional photographic images of members of the Department to the hallways. While these do not replace the portraits, they certainly complement them and represent the diversity of the Department.

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Future Directions There are a few next steps to continue the work. First, it is imperative that the members of the Department gather regularly as a community to think about how visual representations in shared academic spaces shape the experience of the people working in that environment. Second, we should reconsider the membership of the Art Committee by actively inviting Department members who feel excluded by the paintings so that the Committee can work towards an inclusive and viable solution. Third, the Committee could consider including interventions by contemporary artists who can help us find new ways of representing the past and the present. For example, Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health commissioned artist Lisa Rosowsky to create a series of artworks that imagined what the School would “look like if slavery and the oppression of Blacks and Native Americans had not occurred.”15 As a response to this prompt, Rosowsky spent a month researching the history of Black and Indigenous contributions to public health and arrived at a short-list of eight black-and-white photographic portraits of recognized leaders of color in the field that she printed on polyester.16 She then displayed these alongside the existing oil portraits of fourteen white male deans and founders of the School in the Kresge Atrium. The installation, titled Ghost Portraits (May–December 2017), created a compelling visual juxtaposition between the large, faded images of people of color and the more traditional portraits of white men. The exhibition succeeded in “disrupt[ing] the gaze of all those white men kind of looking down on students, staff, and faculty,” by adding images of African American and Indigenous men to the display.17 After a closer look, however, it became apparent that none of the individuals were directly connected with the School, and only one had an affiliation of any kind with Harvard University.18 By expanding the range of individuals to include any significant leader of color in public health, the exhibition did not delve as deeply into the School’s own history to uncover any hidden local narratives. It remains unclear how the installation responded to the prompt about what the School would look like without the barriers of systemic racism, as these individuals actually overcame these obstacles and were likely not “ghosts” in their own universities and communities. While Ghost Portraits created a compelling visual contrast and opened the questions of representation, the sitters were too far removed from the context of Harvard and their own voices were not given a platform to speak. As a counterpoint, two YSM medical students, David Nam and Natty Doilicho, created a photograph called Waypoint (2019), which delves into the lack of representation of people of color at Yale and won first place in the YSM’s annual Marguerite Rush-Lerner Medical Student Creative Writing and Art Contest (Figure 4.2). In this image, an African American medical student, Natty Doilicho, stands in four different stages of interacting with the portraits that hang in the Dean’s Hallway of the Sterling Hall of Medicine, which is the heart of the medical school. In manipulating the photography, Nam combined a series of partially blurred images of Doilicho in his white coat looking closely, attempting to engage, and then standing apart from the

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Figure 4.2  Natty Doilicho and David Nam, Waypoint, 2019. Courtesy of the artists.

portraits entirely. According to the artists, the image specifically captures a first-year medical student’s search for successful role models in the field and the complications of not seeing anyone who looks like them reflected on the walls.19 The blur indicates the movement of a person of color as they search for their place in the history of medicine that resolves by inserting the Black male body into the space dominated by the painted portraits of older white men. Doilicho’s direct gaze and anchored body convey a strong stance that is a welcome intrusion into the monolithic story of white privilege underpinning the hallways. The portrait and additional commissioned artwork by Nam and Doilicho are slated for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition at the YSM on the theme of “self-reflection” for Spring 2020. An even more experimental approach emerged at Berea College in Kentucky from a collaboration between the installation artist, Daniel Feinberg, and the Curator of the College Art Collection, Meghan Doherty. Together, they have moved beyond the binary question about whether to keep the College’s presidential portraits on or off view, and instead thoughtfully reconsidered how portraits might create an inclusive and decolonized environment. Their work focuses on larger questions about the objecthood of paintings, the labor required to create and maintain portraits, and the false perception of an installation’s permanence. To address the latter assumption, Doherty and Feinberg developed a unique wall system where portraits are embedded on removable wall sections. The person using the space can flip the wall section containing a portrait outward to face the room or turn the wall section around so that the portrait is hidden from view. The wall has multiple sections, each with a portrait on one side and a blank surface on the other. The user

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of the space can determine how many portraits they prefer and how they should be displayed. According to Feinberg, “The goal is for individuals in the space to have significant agency in the way they share the space with portraits.”20 This is one of six proposals that Doherty and Feinberg developed working with two students over the summer of 2019 to provoke the viewer to think differently about portraits. This project culminated in the exhibition, Sharing Space with Authority: Proposals for Installing the College Presidential Portraits on view from October 28 to December 13, 2019, at Berea’s Doris Ulmann Galleries. The six portraits that line the conference room of the Psychiatry Department and the innumerable portraits that overtake the visual field in the main YSM hallways have remained unchallenged for decades. The recent effort to convene constituents and experts to develop approaches to reevaluate their status is a necessary first step, and the “Art or Artifact?” workshop provided a format that may prove useful to others. The core challenge articulated in this essay is how to reconcile the exclusionary atmosphere created by an overwhelming number of portraits of “pale and male” leaders with the need for representations of the institution’s past. While further dialogue, inclusive and representative committee membership, and contemporary artwork might move the project along, there is still a significant amount of work ahead to ensure that the walls reflect the diversity contained within them.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

The author would like to thank all the colleagues who have generously reviewed the chapter and have contributed thoughtful feedback, including Dr. John Krystal, Dr. Maya Prabhu, Dr. Kristin Budde, Christopher Gardner, Dr. Thomas Styron, Dr. Robert Rohrbaugh, Dr. Anna Reisman, and Dr. Alfred Kaye. There are many examples of colleges and universities that are undertaking this evaluation in unique and interesting ways including, Harvard University, Princeton University, Oxford College, and Berea College. Many thanks to Edward Town, head of Collections Information and Access, and assistant curator of Early Modern Art at the Yale Center for British Art for this reference and for sharing his knowledge of northern European portraits. For more information, see Tarnya Cooper, Citizen Portrait: Portrait Painting and the Urban Elites of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012); Christ Church (University of Oxford) Library, A Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures in the Library at Christ Church, Oxford: Bequeathed to the College by the Late General Guise, 1765, and of the Additions Made by Subsequent Donations: Also a Catalogue of the Portraits in Christ Church Hall (Oxford: Printed by W. Baxter, 1833). Many thanks for Dr. John Krystal, the current chair of the Yale Department of Psychiatry, for providing this term and crediting the former NIMH Director, Dr. Thomas Insel. Elijah Anderson, “The White Space,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 10–21.

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Katie Reilly, “Yale Renames Calhoun College after Protests over Connection to Slavery,” Time, February 11, 2017, accessed June 4, 2019, https://time.com/4668029/ yale-renames-calhoun-college/; Lindsey Bever, “A Yale Dishwasher Broke a ‘Racist’ Windowpane. Now, He’s Fighting to Reclaim His Job,” Washington Post, July 19, 2016, accessed June 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/ wp/2016/07/12/yale-dishwasher-resigns-after-smashing-racist-very-degradingstained-glass-window/; “New Haven, Connecticut Population 2019 (Demographics, Maps, Graphs),” World Population Review, accessed June 29, 2019, http:// worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/new-haven-population/. 7 Starting in 1916, white women were also admitted to the YSM, as recognized by a recent centenary celebration. It is worth noting that female faculty were not often commemorated in oil paintings “A Century of Women in Medicine at Yale,” Yale School of Medicine, accessed June 29, 2019, https://medicine.yale.edu/news/article. aspx?id=15264. 8 Electives like the US Health Justice course and interest groups like “History, Health, and Humanities” have provided spaces for these types of reflections. 9 “Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum Psychiatry,” Yale School of Medicine, accessed May 21, 2019, https://medicine.yale.edu/psychiatry/education/social/justice. aspx. 10 For example, Dr. Ayana Jordan, MD, PhD, who directs the Social Justice and Health Equity Curriculum (SJHE), and Dr. Jessica Isom, MD, MPH, former director of the SJHE. Billy Bromage et al., Billy Bromage et al., “Understanding Health Disparities through the Eyes of Community Members: A Structural Competency Education Intervention,” Academic Psychiatry 43, no. 2 (May 14, 2018): 244–7. 11 Many thanks to Dr. Robert Rohrbaugh for highlighting this fact. 12 As part of the research, I chaired a panel at the 2018 Annual Conference for Association of Academic Museums and Galleries on “Art in Public Spaces: Controversies over Representation,” where I learned from colleagues at Berea College, the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, and the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College. I also had the opportunity to present a briefer summary of the work in the Art Committee during the session. As part of the research process, I also hosted a more informal roundtable conversation at the 2018 College Art Association conference called “Portraits on Campus: Debates over Representation in Shared Academic Spaces.” 13 The Yale Center for British Art examined the depiction of people of African descent in the exhibition, Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Britain (October 2–December 14, 2014). 14 The portraits were originally removed to repaint the walls of the conference room. They remained off-view until the Committee and Chair of the Department put forth a viable solution. 15 Amy Roeder, “‘Ghost Portraits’ Honor African American and Native American Public Health Notables,” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health News, August 1, 2017, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/ghost-portraits-african-americannative-american-public-health/. 16 William L. Wang, “‘Ghost Portraits’ Commemorate Underrepresented Minorities at School of Public Health,” Harvard Crimson, September 13, 2017, https://www. thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/13/ghost-portraits-honor-poc/. 17 Ibid.

The Campus Portrait Debate 18 Dr. Gertrude Teixeira Hunter received a certification from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration program for Health Systems Management. 19 Artist statement by Natty Doilicho and David Nam. Personal correspondence, June 11, 2019. 20 Daniel Feinberg, correspondence with the author, August 24, 2019.

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“From Commemoration to Education”: Re-Setting Context and Interpretation for a Confederate Memorial Statue on a University Campus By Sarah Sonner

Following an intense period of debates regarding Confederate memorials and symbols in the wake of the June 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the University of Texas at Austin relocated a statue of Jefferson Davis from a prominent place on the UT Austin campus to the Briscoe Center for American History. The Briscoe Center, a research unit of the University and one of its major archival repositories, was tasked with creating an exhibit that would set the statue in a historical context, providing a setting that also reflected the reasons for the statue’s relocation. The resulting exhibit, From Commemoration to Education: Pompeo Coppini’s Statue of Jefferson Davis, first opened at the Briscoe Center in April 2017 (Figure 5.1). The timing of our opening proved to be the first contextualization of a Confederate statue within a museum or gallery setting, although as we created the exhibit, we were unaware that this would place our exhibit as a kind of test case. The timing of the statue’s relocation meant that the exhibit was developed as part of the Center’s renovation, and the exhibit itself now makes up one part of a total reconfiguration of the Center’s public spaces. These also include other galleries for temporary exhibits, a reading room for archival research, classrooms, and support spaces throughout the ground floor level of our building on the UT Austin campus, all of which was developed with the goal of providing greater access to our archive. The Briscoe Center for American History’s mission is to collect, preserve, and make available for research the primary source evidence of American history. Our main audiences are researchers and university student groups, as well as visitors to the nearby Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. As a research archive, the Briscoe Center’s broad collections encompass topics throughout US history. Its collections and scope have grown over the decades and particular strengths now include: Texas history, the history of the American South (including extensive collections documenting slavery), news media, photojournalism, music and performance, congressional and political history, the history of civil rights and social justice movements, as well as the University of Texas archives.

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Figure 5.1  Installation view of From Commemoration to Education exhibit, looking back toward the entrance to the hall gallery and the Briscoe Center’s main entrance, 2017. Courtesy of Briscoe Center for American History.

In describing the Briscoe Center’s exhibit development work, it is important to highlight the particular time this took place, which coincided with the Jefferson Davis statue’s own history of changing interpretations. After the Charleston mass shooting, a national dialogue arose accompanied by questions about the place of Confederate monuments in the public sphere and the responsibilities of institutions charged with looking after them. Amidst widespread reporting of the Charleston shooter’s embrace of Confederate iconography, debates intensified about what to do with such visible symbols. The urgency grew to address this within the museum field, particularly among institutions responsible for local history. In common with other communities around the country, on the UT Austin campus Confederate monuments were criticized by some, including students and alumni, as public displays of racial hatred, and held up by others as symbols of heritage. On the UT Austin campus, the debate focused on the multi-figure Littlefield memorial. Prominently placed as part of the landscape of the University’s South Mall, the memorial consisted of a fountain and six statues and plaques.1 The fountain is positioned at the southern end of a long tree-lined mall. Each statue stood on its own pedestal, spaced along each long side of the mall, with the Jefferson Davis and Woodrow Wilson statues closest to the university’s main administration building (known on campus as “the Tower”) and separated from the mall by a street. In addition, an inscription was set into a wall to the west of the fountain. As a pedestrian traversing the mall, it was close to impossible to view and understand the entire memorial

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components together as one unit—each element was isolated from the others through spacing, plantings, roadways, sightlines, or a combination of these factors. On June 24, the University’s president announced the establishment of a task force, chaired by the University’s vice president for Diversity and Community Engagement and including twelve representatives from student government, faculty, and alumni.2 The task force summarized the history of the whole Littlefield memorial as such: Depicting figures from the Confederacy, nineteenth century Texas, a twentieth century president, World War I archetypal soldiers, a goddess, and mythological sea creatures—all arrayed around a statue of George Washington that looks like part of the memorial but is not—the memorial’s complicated and subjective message has confounded many members of the university community from the time of its creation.3

First commissioned in 1919, and first installed on campus in 1933, over time the fountain component of the memorial developed into a beloved symbol of campus divorced from the Confederate statues further up the South Mall. However, those other elements of the memorial were the subject of sporadic student protest that began to increase in frequency after racially motivated incidents in 1990.4 In March 2015, even before the Charleston killings, two candidates for student government campaigned on a platform that included removal of the Davis statue.5 These students would go on to win president and vice president positions in the Student Government Executive Alliance. After Charleston, the intense debates at UT Austin coalesced around one of the parts of the Littlefield memorial, the sculpture of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States. The statue became a flashpoint for criticism of Confederate memorials (most noticeably through Twitter hashtags such as #DavisMustFall and #dumpthechump) and the target of protests, counter-protests, and graffiti. The president’s task force focused its work on the statue of Davis. The task force held two public hearings in July 2015. These were attended by students, staff, faculty, and members of the public, and attendees had the chance to publicly voice their opinions on what should be done.6 There were a number of strong opinions that went on record, and while there was open disagreement, neither the hearings nor the public protests and counter-protests that occurred at the South Mall escalated to flashpoints in themselves. Ultimately, the task force concluded that relocating the Davis statue, along with the inscription near the fountain, to the Briscoe Center, reflected “Student Government’s specific request and also addresses the Davis statue as the flashpoint of current and recent controversies, representing the figure that some find most offensive as the president of the Confederate States.”7 The task force consulted on a great many options for the statues, combining its own thoughts with those compiled from public input and discussion with experts across campus … There was broad consensus that doing nothing was not a viable option.8

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Since the Briscoe Center holds multiple archives that speak to the history of the statue, we were well placed to explore this through primary source evidence. The archives of the statue’s commissioner, the Confederate veteran, and wealthy University donor George Washington Littlefield and the statue’s sculptor, Chicago-based Italian immigrant Pompeo Coppini, as well as the University’s own administrative archives and others all provided essential materials to present the statue in context. We used twenty Briscoe Center archival collections in the research and realization of the exhibit.9 In the initial exhibit planning phase, we considered how to define the focus of the exhibit. We considered the context of the University’s history, the history of the statue’s commissioning, the national events of the Charleston shootings and their aftermath, including the subsequent dialogue around Confederate memorials, and the input from the community and the UT Austin president’s task force that led to its move in 2015. It was clear that there was no one solution to how Confederate monuments and memorials should be addressed—each has a local context and each community, including ours, would need to find a response appropriate to its specific circumstances and the specific context of the monuments. We determined that the primary focus of the exhibit should be about the statue’s presence on campus, not about who Jefferson Davis was. Its presence as an object had become a primary focus of the debate, and its transferal to the Briscoe Center became a story of the statue as object, the status of that object, and how that status—and resulting interpretation—has changed over time. Exhibit research found evidence that the memorial’s development was contentious from the start: arguments flared at the University leadership level, Littlefield died during the memorial’s development, and the cost of materials rose significantly during the 1920s, all of which combined to delay its installation on campus. In a memoir, Coppini went some way to articulate criticism of the memorial’s developing content, reflecting the opinion that a memorial supposedly designed to show the country coming together through the common cause of the First World War was flawed by its Confederate emphasis. He claimed to suggest to Littlefield a design that placed the statues around a fountain rather than a triumphal arch.10 (We can speculate that whatever hesitations Coppini may have had about the project did not prevent him from continuing its development, in addition to an extensive list of other Confederate memorials in his career.) Following revision of the University’s master plan, changes to the memorial design spread out the majority of the statuary and deviated from Coppini’s earlier vision. After Littlefield’s death, the University’s master architect Paul Cret undertook a revision of the campus plan and new building construction around the South Mall, which relocated the six statues away from their earlier configuration around the fountain and changed the statues’ placement in relation to one another and to the fountain. Our interpretive approach to presenting the history of the statue within an educational exhibit considered the Briscoe Center’s status as a major history research center, with the goal common to all our exhibits: to encourage the use of our archive and promote further research with the primary source evidence we make available. We considered our primary audiences, which include researchers accessing our reading

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room who may have highly specific historical interests or expertise, students and class groups (a diverse group whose particular goals for visiting depend on their class emphasis), and visitors to nearby institutions such as the LBJ Library and Museum (a more general, casual visitor group). We were also aware of our responsibility to the University community, and aware of the wide variety of strong opinions both inside and outside the University about whether or not the statue is inherently a racist symbol. During exhibit development, we also considered how to give visitors access to recent history as part of the statue’s context. Reporting on the Charleston shootings, the growth of debates in communities across the nation around Confederate memorials and symbolism, the 2015 task force convened on campus, and the subsequent decision by the University’s president were all important to contextualize the complex history of the statue and its presence on campus. The physical properties and constraints of the Briscoe Center’s building and its renovation also influenced the exhibit structure. When I joined the Briscoe Center staff in the summer of 2016 and began exhibit development, the demolition of the space was complete, and placement of the statue in the floor plan had been determined within the renovation build. This was an early decision in the renovation planning process due to the bronze statue’s significant weight and size. Exhibit curator Ben Wright’s historiography was complete, which outlined the major research sources and archival collections that we would mine for the selection of primary source documents and images. Still to be determined were the interpretive approach, the archival object selection, the design concept, the build details, and the exhibit text organization and drafting. I directed the development of these between August and December 2016. At the same time, Ben and I acknowledged the limitations inherent to ourselves as exhibit developers. The facts, though presented through primary source evidence, must be brought out through interpretation reliant on decisions by our own subjective perspectives. The exhibit development team, which included senior Briscoe Center leadership along with curatorial and archive staff, also undertook review of the design and interpretive approach by those not directly involved with the development process as well as those with supervisory and subject authority.11 As key guidance, we also relied on the task force report and documentation as reflective of the community’s input. While researching resources for interpretive planning, guides on the subject were regularly emerging during our planning phase. The American Association for State and Local History produced webinars during the growth of the national conversation around such memorials that proved useful for guidance, including “Grappling with Confederate Monuments and Iconography.”12 Recent and ongoing discussions available in the field included the National Council on Public History’s Confederate Memory Series, the Atlanta History Center’s Confederate Monument Interpretation, and more that began to appear in the run-up to the exhibit opening.13 Since the conversation was actively developing within the museum interpretation field, the amount of discussion and ideas being proposed and tested grew throughout the exhibit development and installation timeframe, along with our team’s awareness that we were creating an exhibit within an actively evolving discussion within the field.

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The guidance I drew from these sources was to center interpretation on each community’s needs. There was no one-size-fits-all solution, so we needed to find something that worked for our particular circumstances at UT Austin and at the Briscoe Center. The development was guided by the community input solicited by the University president’s task force, articulated many diverse points of view, and provided a resource and record of the University community’s response. When considering public opinions expressed through the task force hearings and surveys, we saw that while split among multiple options for the fate of the statues, all the outcomes that the task force considered would benefit from access to greater historical context about the statue’s history. As part of a leading research university, and as a repository of primary sources, one of our main goals is to guide visitors to examine the factual evidence and have the means to draw conclusions to the key questions, as well as the means to discover more through our resources. Three questions proved essential to guide the work and inform decisions made regarding content, structure, and visitor experience: ●● ●● ●●

Why was this statue placed at UT Austin in the first place? How did it remain on campus while the world around it changed? Why is it now at the Briscoe Center?

We determined that these questions could be addressed through a chronological presentation of the statue’s history. We mapped out the content for space planning in the gallery and interpretive order and relationships between sections, revising as the design and object selection developed. The text was crafted and revised also with an outline hierarchy structure in mind. This text hierarchy broke down the content pieces (object labels, section or theme panels, image captions, intro and credit panels) into an outline of written components. This outline of components defined their relationships and served as a guide to place each individual text element in support of the chronological object arrangement. Taken overall, the text spoke to the point of the statue’s convoluted history and helped to support the addition of recent events to the story of the statue’s greater historical context. All these considerations informed the exhibit’s realization and translated, sometimes literally, into design structure and format. In terms of design approaches and solutions, it was key that any view of the statue included visual evidence of its history, so that it could not be seen as independent of this historical context. We felt that to understand the statue, accessing and understanding its historical evidence were paramount. This translated to the design in a literal choice to use images and text as backdrop and adjacent to the statue, rather than a blank surface. To design this, we had to work within certain physical constraints, including relationships with other spaces in the building. Our hall gallery also functions as the public route for access to the reading room, so the statue’s size and potential dominance of the space had to be taken into account. Visitors would also encounter it in context of our main gallery exhibit, which shares a wall with one portion of the hall itself. Our opening main gallery exhibit was slated to focus on our American

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South collections and, in developing that exhibit’s scope, we paid attention to how that exhibit’s chronological structure and context regarding the “Lost Cause” could speak to the hall exhibit’s content as well, thus adding further context to the emergence of these types of Confederate memorials within the history of public memory about the Civil War. We planned the entry and exit points of the main and hall displays to give visitors a choice and guide pathways, ensuring that there was a neutral space wherein they could choose which exhibit to view first and did not have to walk through one to get to the other. While these two exhibits were crafted with a relationship in mind, they each stood as separate displays. Planning for transitional points between exhibit areas ensured that this was clearly demarcated for visitors, along with other design cues like title signage, paint color, and graphics that were each married to a look and feel specific to each exhibit. In developing the design for the exhibit from initial concept to final build, we made several important design decisions led by the content and interpretive emphasis. We wanted to ensure that the statue itself was not the first and most dominant element of the hall gallery upon entry, which would have risked it being perceived as having a privileged or elevated position in our public spaces. To address this, we added a wing wall into the space that created a niche for the statue itself, ensuring that the sightline to the statue from our entrance placed interpretive content first. This was also a choice made to demarcate the statue’s exhibit area as distinct from the hall gallery, to allow for different uses and future flexibility in hall exhibit layouts. It was also important for the design to show the statue’s ties to its former place on campus, and this was achieved through green and gray/brown color choices that drew inspiration from the evergreen live oaks visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall, and that featured in the memorial’s earlier campus setting as well. We also made the decision early to use enlarged images as supergraphics on the walls. We chose Coppini’s early “accepted sketch” and the later aerial renderings of the eventual campus masterplan that shifted his statue placement further up the South Mall. These provided the backing for our introduction panel and for the statue itself, further communicating that the statue is embedded within a historical context and, moreover, one that has been revised over time, even through the initial thirteen years of the memorial’s original design development. We wanted to place the central idea of the presence and importance of historical context, and of its changes and shifts over time, as part of the essential structure of the exhibit. We chose a graphic format for particular points of the display to reinforce the context and concept of layers and transparency through the use of multiple fabric scrim treatments for the title itself. Our goal here was to use the possibilities of the design to reiterate and reinforce the concepts of the exhibit via a visual form within the gallery space. In finalizing the case placement, our architects proposed an approach that placed a series of display cases in progression down the hall. The casework, made of transparent Plexiglas on all sides, allowed us to float the documents and images on mounts within them, and provided a literal visual layering of primary source evidence for any visitors moving down the hall and through the exhibit space.

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The exhibit remained installed in this format for about ten months, until it was condensed into a smaller permanent version, in keeping with the Center’s goals to use the hall gallery space for rotation of temporary displays. Providing visitors with ongoing access to the information on the Davis statue’s history took into account feedback on digital versus print material and physical object access and display constraints. In the original iteration, visitors accessed the primary source paper documents through the physical display of the originals (or facsimiles where the objects were too fragile) and the interactive screen primarily held born-digital content, including tweets, the task force publication, website news articles, and filmed footage of the public hearings. Through observation and feedback from instructors, we found that visitors relied on either one or the other as a primary point of engagement. We wanted to maintain the visual context for the statue through use of the supergraphic behind it and expand the audiovisual component with a bigger screen and an in-house designed interface that could be updated and modified over time. We saw this as a way to build in flexibility to address potential future exhibit and interpretive needs, both for future new content in the dialogue around Confederate memorials and public memory, and for the evolving conversation in the museum world about how best to interpret contested history. This revised screen now includes the born-digital content and scans of the primary source documents, set within the interpretive text framework and including the Briscoe Center collection citations. The interpretive text panels set inside the interactive are redundant with the panel text integrated within the wall supergraphic, as a tactic to ensure that essential contextual information is available in whatever form of engagement visitors gravitate towards. Since its opening, the exhibit has been visited by museum professionals and academics from other institutions planning projects that address similar topics. Class visits, whether led by the professor or facilitated in tandem with Briscoe Center staff docents, have tended to focus on one particular aspect of the exhibit in keeping with their course goals and subject emphasis. This has included such content topics as the history of the American South and cultural memory, a comparative art historical approach to looking at commemorative statues in public spaces, and a museum studies approach to examine and critique the exhibit as a display. We have been gratified to observe that while visitors sometimes take phone snapshots of the statue, they also frequently take photos of the interpretive panels as well. Visitor feedback has run the gamut of opinions; some believe that the exhibit does not go far enough in judging Littlefield a racist, while some believe that the statue should be moved back to a pedestal on the South Mall. Given that the Center’s exhibition From Commemoration to Education was the first attempt of its kind to contextualize and interpret a Confederate memorial statue within a museum setting, shifting the statue from a space of commemoration to an interpretive exhibit display, it reflects its time of development and installation. Likewise, its subsequent condensed version reflects the time of that shift as well. The Briscoe Center created the condensed exhibit aware that the conversation around these objects of public Confederate commemoration continued, and will continue, to evolve. At the time of writing, this occurred most prominently following the racially

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motivated killing of a counter protestor in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. Following this, UT Austin president Gregory Fenves decided to remove the four remaining Confederate memorial statues from their plinths on the South Mall and transfer them into the collections of the Briscoe Center where they are made available for scholarly study. As he stated in a letter to the community: The University of Texas at Austin has a duty to preserve and study history. But our duty also compels us to acknowledge that those parts of our history that run counter to the university’s core values, the values of our state and the enduring values of our nation do not belong on pedestals in the heart of the Forty Acres.14

While the Davis statue has now been re-set as a permanent exhibit display within a history archive, that display’s interpretive material—through a combination of audiovisual interactive and the visual context of historical images—bears an ongoing responsibility to continue to reflect changes and context over time.

Notes 1

2 3 4

5

The original Littlefield memorial design by Pompeo Coppini included six bronze statues, four of which are associated with the Confederacy: Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederate States), James W. Hogg (first native-born governor of Texas), Albert Sidney Johnston (general in the Texas, United States, and Confederate Armies), Robert E. Lee (Confederate general), John H. Reagan (postmaster general of the Confederacy), and Woodrow Wilson (twenty-eighth president of the United States). UT News press release, June 15, 2015, accessed October 13, 2019, https://news.utexas. edu/2015/06/24/task-force-to-review-jefferson-davis-statue-on-campus/. Report to president Gregory L. Fenves, “Task Force on Historical Representation of Statuary at UT Austin,” August 10, 2015, accessed July 1, 2019, http://diversity.utexas. edu/statues/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Task-Force-Report-FINAL-08_09_15.pdf. Several highly visible racial incidents occurred in 1990 during a spring weekend known as “Roundup,” where campus Greek organizations hosted a weekend of parties. Among them, a parade car was painted with racial slurs, and T-shirts were also distributed with racial images. See Ahsika Sanders, “Racial Conflicts Tarnish History of Roundup,” Daily Texan, April 13, 2011, accessed October 13, 2019, https:// www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2011/04/13/racial-conflicts-tarnish-history-ofroundup; and Matthew Adams, “Controversial Iconography on UT’s Campus,” Daily Texan, July 15, 2015, accessed October 13, 2019, https://www.dailytexanonline. com/2015/07/12/controversial-iconography-on-uts-campus. The students, Xavier Rotnofsky and Rohit Mandalapu, filed a resolution with student government, including pages of documentation supporting the removal, which was eventually passed. While their campaign included many satirical elements, Rotnofsky and Mandalapu’s campaign gained seriousness and focus up through and following their win of the runoff elections in mid-March 2015. Samantha Ketterer, “RotnofskyMandalapu File Resolution to Remove Jefferson Davis Statue,” Daily Texan, March

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Teachable Monuments 9, 2015, accessed October 19, 2019, https://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/03/06/ rotnofsky-mandalapu-file-resolution-to-remove-jefferson-davis-statue. “In addition, more than 3,100 individuals completed an online questionnaire about the statues, with 33% in favor of removing the statue of Jefferson Davis; 27% in favor of removing multiple statues; 33% in favor of retaining the statues in their current locations; and 7% presenting other options or comments for the task force.” Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, News Release, August 10, 2015, accessed October 13, 2019, https://diversity.utexas.edu/statues/2015/08/10/task-force-reportavailable-for-download/. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 5. The following list of Briscoe Center collections was used for exhibit research: Coppini-Tauch Papers, George Washington Brackenridge Papers, George Washington Littlefield Papers, Gracy-Littlefield Collection, Harry Yandell Benedict Papers, Prints and Photographs Collection, Robert E. Vinson Papers, Robert Lynn Batts Papers, Texas Newspaper Collection, The Alcalde, UT Austin Cactus Yearbook Collection, UT Office of Community Relations—Division of Diversity and Community Engagement Records, UT Office of Public Affairs Records, UT Ex-Students’ Association Records, UT President’s Office Records, UT Memorabilia Collection, Vertical Files, Walter Marshall William Splawn Papers, William James Battle Papers, William Seneca Sutton Papers. “More and more as time goes by and new generations are born, they will look to the civil war as a blot on the pages of American history and the Littlefield memorial will be resented as keeping up the hatred between the northern and southern states.” Pompeo Coppini, From Dawn to Sunset (San Antonio: Press of the Naylor Co., 1949), 225. Reviewers of text and design concept development included the Briscoe Center’s Executive Director Dr. Don Carleton and the university’s provost Dr. Maurie McInnis. American Association for State and Local History, “Grappling with Confederate Monuments and Iconography, Webinar,” March 28, 2016, accessed July 1, 2019, https://aaslh.org/event/webinar-hot-topic-grappling-with-confederate-monumentsand-iconography/2018-08-04/. National Council on Public History, “History @Work,” Confederate Memory (blog series), accessed July 1, 2019, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/tag/confederatememory-series/; and Atlanta History Center, “Confederate Monument Interpretation Guide,” accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/research/ confederate-monuments. President Gregory L. Fenves, “Confederate Statues on Campus,” University of Texas at Austin, August 20, 2017, accessed July 1, 2019, https://president.utexas.edu/messages/ confederate-statues-on-campus.

6

Making Material Histories: Institutional Memory and Multivocal Interpretation By Kailani Polzak

Williams College sits on Mohican homelands at the very northwest corner of Massachusetts, along the borders of New York and Vermont. On its campus, sandwiched between a parking lot and a dormitory building, is a small copse of trees surrounding a stone marker that consists of a globe perched atop a pillar of locally hewn marble.1 An adjacent plaque reads: HAYSTACK MONUMENT On this site in the shelter of a haystack during a summer storm in 1806 five Williams College students dedicated their lives to the service of the Church around the globe. Out of their decision grew the American Foreign Mission Movement

During a period of religious revival known as the “Second Great Awakening,” the abovementioned Williams students gathered in a field for their regular prayer meeting and to discuss a recent text on missionary efforts abroad. According to several accounts, a thunderstorm began to roll in, and the young men sought safety in the lee of a haystack, promising that if they survived, they would dedicate their lives to spreading Christianity. The meeting initiated a chain of events that led to the establishment of The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (commonly and hereafter abbreviated as ABCFM), which in turn sent missionaries to Africa, Asia, Europe, Hawaiʻi, and Native American nations. The narrative of the Haystack Prayer Meeting became formalized in 1854 when one of the five students, Byram Green, returned to Williams College and pointed out the site where he remembered convening. His account was later published in the 1860 as A History of Williams College and in the intervening years, the president of the College, Mark Hopkins, was elected to also serve as the president of the ABCFM.2 During Hopkins’s presidencies, the college became increasingly associated with the Missionary Movement as missionary descendants began reuniting annually in Williamstown, and the Haystack Monument was erected in 1867 with funds bequeathed by an alumnus.

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The Beginnings of an Exhibition Today, the association of Williams College with the ABCFM is less widely known and celebrated. Although the College Chaplain’s office and the Pastor of the town’s First Congregational Church are often approached by visiting Christian groups to take them to visit the monument as a site of their faith heritage, many Williams students fail to notice this monument, much less connect it to the birth of the American Protestant Missionary Movement. For the students who are aware of its presence on campus, it is polarizing; some go to the monument to reflect and pray, while others go out of their way to avoid it because to them it celebrates an organization that furthered American colonialism around the world. Because the Haystack Monument and missionary histories are no longer regarded as central to Williams College culture, these two views of the institution’s past are infrequently put into conversation with one another. The College Committee on Campus Space and Institutional History noted this dichotomy in a May 2017 report and concluded their account of the monument with the suggestion that the opportunity here is not to try to make a singular narrative with Haystack, but rather to help provide the basis for thoughtful conversations and reflection about the monument and about the transformations in values that have occurred at Williams and elsewhere. Indeed, our hope is that we will begin to see those conversations happen around Haystack in the near future.3

With this freshly published report on our minds, Sonnet Kekilia Coggins, then interim deputy director of the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), and I met to discuss the possibility of co-curating an exhibition about the entangled histories of Williams College and the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in the nineteenth century and how such an exhibition could bring together various perspectives. We immediately recognized that the ongoing stories that emerge from the Williams-Hawaiʻi connection could not stand in for the totality of the ABCFM’s past, nor could the Haystack Monument alone serve as our institutional metonym. It was then that we discussed relevant objects and documents at WCMA and at College Special Collections and Archives. From there, “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi and Material Histories in the Making took shape. The Haystack Monument is the most readily visible manifestation of missionary history at Williams, but in putting together our exhibition we also drew from two collections on campus. The first is held in WCMA’s secondary collection and contains the remnants of the long-defunct Williams College Lyceum of Natural History, a studentrun museum and club that conducted expeditions and exchanged natural history specimens and cultural belongings from Indigenous nations with the Smithsonian (at the time, newly formed) and museums in Europe. The second group of materials was selected from the papers of Samuel Chapman Armstrong in College Archives. Armstrong was born in 1839 to missionary parents in Wailuku on the island of Maui, graduated with the Williams Class of 1862, and today is best known for founding the

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Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. By displaying this array of material belongings, photographs, and documents together and in conversation with community reflections on the Haystack Monument, Sonnet and I asked: What do our institutional collections tell us about who we were? Is that different from who we are now? To what end have these collections been used? Can that be changed?

Partial Histories of a Fragmented Collection Reconstituting the Williams College Lyceum’s collection was a lesson in euro-centric disinterest. Its remains consisted of sixty-three items, from rocks to fishhooks, shoes, and spears that had been found in a single box in a dormitory basement in 1986. Sonnet and I quickly learned that the default cataloging system used by many museums relies on art historical categories (artist, title, medium) that are not commensurate with the objects themselves. In considering the extended biographies of objects that could best be described as Indigenous belongings, we came to see that their transformation into museum holdings by the members of the Lyceum and later WCMA employed several tactics of what Margaret Bruchac has called strategic alienation.4 Alienation begins with the knowing “removal” of belongings from Indigenous custody and then proceeds to “detribalize” them by interpreting them as relics of dead or dying nations. These first two steps facilitate “museumification” wherein belongings become the property of the institution and are subject to its logic and vocabulary.5 Moreover, because these belongings were relegated to a secondary collection rather than accessioned into the museum’s main collection, they were not given thorough attention at the time of cataloging. Despite earnest efforts by the museum staff at the time, much of the information in the catalog is erroneous. A carved wooden paddle listed as Hawaiian in origin is in fact from Tuhaʻa Pae at the southernmost edge of French Polynesia, also called the Austral Islands. Sonnet and I believe that the Hawaiian designation was determined by looking for comparable paddles at peer institutions. Mount Holyoke, a nearby women’s college that was attended by several missionaries, has a paddle similar to the one at Williams and it bears a note that states: “A paddle carved by the natives of the Hawaiian Islands brought to this country by Julia Brooks Spaulding, an early Missionary there.” This was one of many instructive examples for us of how museum practice replicates colonial networks unselfconsciously. This is not the fault of a specific curator or registrar, but of art history more broadly. A central concern for Sonnet and me in planning the exhibition was that we did not want to simply replace one master narrative with another. For this reason, we decided that each of the Lyceum’s former holdings should be displayed and made portable in individual boxes not only to acknowledge their past of taxonomies turned into history, but also to signal that objects can be removed from that narrative to make new histories (Figure 6.1). We purposely avoided putting similar objects together in the gallery as we did not want to replicate old typologies. To acknowledge the institutional mistakes of the past and the continued gaps in our knowledge, we included the museum’s erroneous cataloging on the individual object labels and annotated them by

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Figure 6.1  Display boxes from the exhibition “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi, and Material Histories in the Making at the Williams College Museum of Art, 2018. Photograph by Jim Gipe/Pivot Media. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art.

hand.6 We crossed off “anonymous” and replaced it with “maker not known”, though now following the practice of other museums we would likely change that to “once known” as an indicator that the accessibility of information to our institution is not the final word. Throughout the research process, we talked with curators and cultural practitioners to see if they could identify any of the belongings. When the origin could be located, we added it to the label. When we did not know, we left the information as we had found it and visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to contact us if they felt it came from their nation. We were concerned about inciting too much nostalgia for the natural history cabinet of the nineteenth century and were cautious about replicating its under-questioned authority. Sonnet and I also sought to challenge the primacy and impermeability of the written word. Although the Lyceum might appear at first quite separate from the College’s missionary history, through our research we found a sizable overlap in membership. More importantly, both the ABCFM and the Lyceum of Natural History staked part of their authority in notions of progress and literacy. For that reason, Sonnet and I elected to wallpaper the gallery dedicated to the Lyceum collection with pages from the 1852 Lyceum catalog that were the least systematic and prominently excerpted a quotation that we felt was most indicative of the Lyceum’s purpose: “Mementoes of dead nations and races will yet, we hope, adorn our museums illustrating history and the progress of art.”7 These words not only convey the exact prerogatives that Bruchac

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describes as strategic alienation, but also were included to remind visitors that natural history is not a neutral exercise of curiosity. Rather, it has long been wielded as a way of imposing intellectual, moral, and political order upon the world. The Lyceum’s ambitions are inextricably tied to European and American constructions of civility that demeaned both the complexity and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples around the world.

The Archive in the Museum The fulcrum between the Lyceum and the gallery dedicated to the College’s archives related to Hawaiʻi was a kūpeʻe niho ʻīlio, an adornment made of dog teeth. This was the only item in the Lyceum’s collection that actually came from Hawaiʻi. Like many of the other belongings from the Lyceum, whether weapons taken from hands, or shoes removed from feet, this kūpeʻe would have been animated by a person. It would have been tied around the shin of a male-identifying hula dancer and would have made an incredible percussive sound as he danced.8 We wanted to convey the continuity of Kānaka Maoli, Native Hawaiians, and their culture and decided to anchor this gallery with the Hawaiian protocol of entering a space with an oli—or chant that is unaccompanied by percussion.9 When we met with our student collaborator, Nālamakūikapō Ahsing, to discuss which oli we thought would be most appropriate, he responded by saying that he wanted to write an original oli as a young Hawaiian in the twenty-first century. As exhibition visitors entered the gallery, they would hear him call upon his ancestors and gods to awaken, speak, and once again set across the ocean—referencing histories of Hawaiian navigation as well as the journeys of the kūpeʻe and Nālamakūikapō to Williamstown. From there, viewers could contemplate five thematic groupings where we suspended selections from the College Archives and Special Collections (Figure 6.2). While visitors stood in the middle of each of these groupings, a directional speaker mounted above would play an ambient audio track of multiple individuals grappling with documents and their histories from different perspectives (we included transcripts in the gallery for greater accessibility). We called our contributors to the audio tracks our “community of voices.” Made up of Sonnet, Nālamakūikapō, myself, and eight others, the community featured a mix of scholars, curators, students, and a pastor with different perspectives on and connections to both Williams and Hawaiʻi. We requested interviews with more people than the number who were ultimately featured in the exhibition, and if I were going to revisit this format, I would allot more time to planning in order to best accommodate the schedules of potential collaborators. While we listed our community of voices members in the introductory wall text, when visitors listened to the audio tracks they were given neither the option to choose a preferred speaker nor did we identify the speakers in the tracks themselves. Moreover, Sonnet and I included both our intellectual and affective responses to the documents we discussed, and we encouraged others to do the same. Our aim was to offer visitors multivocal interpretations of the form, content, and significance of the

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Figure 6.2  The Hawaiʻi archive gallery in the “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawaiʻi, and Material Histories in the Making exhibition at the Williams College Museum of Art, 2018. Photograph by Jim Gipe/Pivot Media. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art.

archival materials in front of them. This freed us from having to craft a single coherent narrative and we presented visitors with the opportunity to see themselves as potential interlocutors. The materials in this gallery, with few exceptions, came from the archives of College alumnus Samuel Chapman Armstrong. Armstrong’s collection includes photography albums and loose photographs, which evoke the rise of studio photography in Hawaiʻi and the production of stereotypically ethnographic images of Hawaiian cultural practices. One of our contributors, Healoha Johnston, at the time curator of the Arts of Hawaiʻi at the Honolulu Museum of Art and now curator of Asian Pacific American Women’s Cultural History at the Smithsonian, described the rise of the “hula dancer” image in the nineteenth century. She also pointed out the careful self-fashioning of members of the Hawaiian Royal family in portrait photography at the very moment when Hawaiʻi’s culture and its monarchy, often styled in a mix of traditional and Victorian regalia, were understood to be of central importance to the international recognition of its sovereignty.

Dialogical Documents In this collection was a photograph of a luau at a famous missionary school in Honolulu where Samuel Chapman Armstrong gave an address. It appears to document

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the beginning of the meal as several of those pictured appear to be saying grace before eating. Among this number is Queen Liliʻuokalani, dressed in black, adorned with a lei as her attendant bears a feather standard to mark her royal presence. I found it poignant to see this picture of the queen bowing her head in prayer and dressed sedately knowing that shortly thereafter she would be derided as undisciplined and unfit to rule by several with whom she dined that evening. To convey what Amy Lonetree has called “the hard truths of colonialism,” we mounted this photograph next to an article authored by Samuel Chapman Armstrong entitled “The Hawaiian Problem” in which he argued that Hawaiians, like emancipated Black Americans, require the guidance and guardianship of those longer established in “Christian civilization.”10 Speaking as one who grew up in the Hawaiian kingdom, formerly led a Black infantry unit in the Civil War, and founded a school to train Black and Indigenous students to become teachers and agricultural workers, Armstrong asserted that persons of color were too early in the civilizing process to govern themselves. A counterpoint to Armstrong’s own words written in English was a grouping devoted to ten letters written in the Hawaiian language. Nine of them were “mele,” a term that can be translated as songs, chants, or even poems. To our knowledge, it was the first time that texts in ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi were featured in an exhibition at Williams. Sonnet, Nālamakūikapō, and I chose to leave them untranslated. In contrast to a photograph we displayed in the Lyceum gallery that showed Williams students holding weapons and paddles taken from Indigenous communities and conjoined with the Lyceum’s “mementos of dead nations,” these letters written by Kanaka Maoli authors, together with the audio, brought human voices to bear on materials once advanced as inert evidence of Euro-American progress. The letters appear to be responses to calls that Samuel Chapman Armstrong placed in 1860 in Ka Hae Hawaii (which translates to the “Flag of Hawaiʻi”), a newspaper published by the Hawaiian Department of Public Instruction.11 Armstrong at the time was editor-in-chief of the newspaper and asked readers to send old mele so that they could be printed in the paper and archived at Punahou (a school originally established for the children of missionaries, but more famous now as the alma mater of President Barack Obama). Armstrong expressed a particular interest in mele that discussed a great flood or the creation of the sun, moon, and stars. The mele at Williams, however, contain no such references; rather, one describes the canoe of a famous voyager, some lament the passing of prominent chiefs, others honor the victories of Kamehameha I, and the reigns of Kamehameha III and Kamehameha IV. Our research into these letters and their authors is still ongoing, but what I can say is that the authors that we have identified so far are generally aliʻi, or of chiefly lineages. William Luther Moehonua—often listed as a cousin of King David Kalākaua and Queen Liliʻuokalani—sent to Armstrong a very famous mele that was originally written as a prophecy foretelling the ascendancy of Kamehameha I. It does mention the sun, but not in the sense of biblical Genesis, which seems to be the subtext of Armstrong’s request. Instead, it describes the changing sky in the wake of Kamehameha I gaining control over Hawaiʻi island. Moehonua ends his letter by stating that he is not finished, that a second mele will arrive in a second letter, and that he expects this first mele to

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be published on the front page of the next issue.12 We did not find a second letter from Moehonua. Moreover, Nālamakūikapō found that his letter was not published in the next issue of Ka Hae; it appeared two years later in Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika (Star of the Pacific), a newspaper established and edited by Kānaka Maoli to better suit their interests than those overseen by missionary presses.13 Mele themselves are a form of archive, of marking and recording information deemed important to pass on. These nineteenth-century letters then are doubly archival. They contain not only the knowledge of the elders, but they have also been transcribed in fine penmanship to be preserved in an archive of another form.14 This was all the more urgent in the 1860s. Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s father, Richard Armstrong, had served as minister of public instruction from 1847 to 1855, at which point he was appointed president of the board of education. During his tenure in those positions, he reformed the education system in Hawai‘i and standardized curricula around the study of the Bible and the English language. In the audio track at this station, one of our voice contributors describes their reaction encountering these letters: I saw them as not only these time capsules, that saved and have perpetuated these songs and chants and stories, but also as written forms of resistance. And that kūpuna [ancestors] said “No, this is important. In a time and place where I’m denied my indigeneity and connection to my ancestral being. I will write and transcribe these epics of mine.”

Organizing Information The histories that connect Williams and Hawaiʻi are charged, complex, and ongoing. Moreover, they are unfamiliar to many. We learned that our interlocutors from Hawaiʻi were very familiar with the role Sanford B. Dole played in the erosion of sovereignty and eventual overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by a group of pro-annexationist businesspeople and lawyers, but did not know that he was an alumnus of Williams College. By contrast, most of our colleagues at Williams had neither heard of Dole nor noticed that the college offered him an honorary degree in 1897 listing his occupation as “President of the Republic of Hawaii.” Sonnet and I, therefore, needed to acquaint our visitors with a Williams that was different from the college they know and Hawaiʻi as an internationally recognized sovereign kingdom. In order to offer some context, half of the Hawaiʻi archive gallery was encircled by a timeline beginning with the Haystack Prayer Meeting in 1806 through the 1898 US joint resolution to annex Hawaiʻi. The upper section and lower sections of the timeline marked important dates in the history of the College and of Hawaiʻi, respectively, with ABCFM missions notated in the liminal space between. In all three sections, the names of Williams alumni were called out with bold typeface in purple (the primary color of the College). The timeline was not part of our original concept for the exhibition. Sonnet started it as a means of organizing her research findings. As the exhibition progressed and took shape, we solicited feedback from other members of the Museum staff who

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unequivocally argued for its inclusion, especially as the Hawaiʻi archive gallery was intended to look like research animated. We included verbiage in the timeline itself to indicate that it was an ongoing research aid rather than a finalized product. Nonetheless, this shift from private mnemonic to public-facing didactic not only changed the timeline itself, but it also focused our research. Knowing that we could not include every significant piece of information, event, or name, Sonnet and I continuously asked each other whether a particular piece of information spoke to the connections specifically between Williams and Hawaiʻi. Although we were conceptually interested in how people and materials are mobilized in the production of knowledge, our exhibition was not about New England universities and colleges and Hawaiʻi; it was ultimately about our own institution. This also helped us determine the orientation of the timeline itself. The later dates coincided with the doorway connecting the Hawaiʻi archive gallery to the Lyceum gallery, and as visitors followed the timeline back through the gallery, they could see that Sanford B. Dole and two other alumni not only were prominent annexationists in Hawaiʻi, but also served functionary roles in the Williams College Lyceum. The timeline terminated at our audio station dedicated to “Haystack Histories,” where our “community of voices” contributors recounted what they knew of the Haystack Monument, Haystack Prayer Meeting, and reflected on what those things mean to them now. Thus, the timeline, along with the kūpeʻe niho ʻīlio, tied together our major themes, institutions, and historical actors across the two galleries.

Learning Opportunities As one might surmise, a single station with eighteen minutes of audio material from eight contributors could not encapsulate every perspective on the Haystack Monument. “Haystack Histories” was the portion of the exhibition about which we received the most feedback via the Williams-Hawaiʻi email address we set up for visitors to “continue the conversation” with us. In addition, we organized a speaker series on the history of missionaries in Hawaiʻi and two campus conversations about grappling with difficult histories. The campus conversations were a newer practice at the museum inspired by the exhibitions of Fall 2018, ours included, that proved controversial among our students. Although we had included campus conversations in our programming plan long before the exhibition opened, they came to serve as forums for the polarized student reactions to the exhibition, namely that we were either too critical or not critical enough of American missionaries.15 The aim of these events was to take stock of what lenses were available to our community onto these histories, recognize which accounts tended to dominate, and revisit those that had been ignored or suppressed. Despite the time we devoted to planning the conversations and the very intentional structures we had outlined, conversations among humans meander and are sometimes dominated by confident voices to the exclusion of the more timid. What I learned from attending events both for “The Field Is the World” and for another exhibition that semester is that they would

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have benefited either from the experience of someone who specializes in facilitating discussions among heterogeneous groups or from a clear protocol for limiting and distributing speaking time. Where the idea of the “Williams community” had given Sonnet and me a clear direction for our timeline, it proved a broad category for organizing group discussions. Students in their first and second years were often sidelined by their peers in their third and fourth years, and almost all of the students found it difficult to express many of their thoughts when the conversations became overly specialized among faculty, staff, alumni, and Williamstown residents. Fortunately, our events were not the only space in which students could express their views on the Haystack Monument and the histories connoted by it. In the same semester, College Archives put together an exhibit about the history of the Haystack Monument itself and the land on which it stands. For Sonnet and me, this underscored the need for consistency and support across the College. Inquiries into institutional history cannot merely be published as reports, or relegated to two galleries in a museum, but must be palpably incorporated into the larger efforts of the institution itself. To set these connections off to best effect, I would suggest taking a cue from some of the work larger museums have done with Indigenous nations and allot a greater length of time than usual to the preparation of the exhibition and bring in collaborators very early on.16 This type of learning cannot be rushed and it requires building relationships and instituting plans for ongoing efforts. Indeed, “The Field Is the World” has spurred the Williams College Museum of Art to consider whether the Museum fits into the futures of the Indigenous belongings collected by the Lyceum; a project dedicated to that question, including correspondence with tribal preservation offices in North America, will begin in the summer of 2020. The exhibition and its related programs were but a step in continuing a reflexive process at Williams and finding our way to more dialogical practices. Projects like “The Field Is the World” are not only about placing institutions or towns within larger geopolitical networks and histories of settler colonialism, but also about saying that we all need to be looking at our pasts and actions to ask whether we can be doing more and doing better.

Notes 1

As this chapter reflects on a museum exhibition, it is the result of the thinking and hard work of many individuals. In addition to my irreplaceable co-curator and thinking partner Sonnet Kekilia Coggins, executive director of the Merwin Conservancy, and our collaborator Nālamakūikapō Ahsing, I am grateful for research assistance by graduate students Thomas Price and Rebecca Singerman, exhibition design by David Gürçay-Morris, audio editing by Patrick Gray Jr., and graphic design by Jen Rork. Additional thanks are owed to Lisa Conathan, head of Special Collections at Williams College, and Sarah Currie of the Williamstown Historical Museum for lending to the exhibition both their expertise and materials in their care. This project could never have been realized without Nathan Ahern, chief preparator, Adi Nachman, exhibitions and programs manager, and Nina Pelaez, assistant curator of Public Programs and Interpretation who extended to us more generosity than we

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could have anticipated. I am indebted to our community of voices contributors from whom I learned so much: Horace Ballard, Holly Edwards, Ayami Hatanaka, Healoha Johnston, Reverend Mark Longhurst, Jeffrey Kapali Lyon, Sonya Mital, and Scott Wong. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation for all of the Williams College students, staff, faculty, and alumni who attended events before and during the run of the exhibition and offered us their thoughtful feedback and probing questions. 2 Calvin Durfee, A History of Williams College (Boston: A. Williams, 1860), 244, 287, 288. 3 In the Spring of 2016, then-President Adam Falk asked a committee composed of fifteen Williams College faculty, staff, and students (including an alumni representative) to research and solicit feedback on elements of the College campus that raised concerns as to institutional inclusivity. Committee on Campus Space and Institutional History, Williams College: Final Report (Williamstown, 2017), 9–10, accessed June 10, 2020, https://president.williams.edu/files/CSIH-final-reportMay-2017.pdf. 4 Margaret M. Bruchac, “Broken Chains of Custody: Possessing, Dispossessing, and Repossessing Lost Wampum Belts,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 162, no. 1 (March 2018): 73–4. 5 Ibid. 6 Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s discussion of the power of naming to shape realities helped us to understand the stakes of these decisions. See Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Zed Books; Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2012), 158–9. 7 Catalogue of the Lyceum of Natural History of Williams College (Williamstown: 1852), 6. 8 I use “male-identifying” here to convey that gender roles, identity, and expression are not static, neither in the present nor historically in Hawaiʻi. 9 Here our conceptual framework was influenced by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, “ʻA Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity,” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association 5, no. 1 (Spring 2016), accessed June 10, 2020, https://csalateral.org/issue/5-1/forum-alt-humanities-settler-colonialismenduring-indigeneity-kauanui/; and Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln: Nebraska, 1999). 10 Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 5–9. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, “Address by S.C. Armstrong at the Lyceum Before the YMCA, August 27, 1880: The Hawaiian Problem,” Box 1, Folder 12, Samuel Armstrong Papers, Williams College Archives and Special Collections. 11 M. Puakea Nogelmeier, Mai Paʻa I Ka Leo: Historical Voice in Hawaiian Primary Materials, Looking Forward and Listening Back (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press; Awaiaulu Press, 2010), 77–9. 12 William Luther Moehonua to S.C. Limaikaika (Samuel Chapman Armstrong), March 26 1860, Box 1, Folder 16, Samuel Armstrong Papers, Williams College Archives and Special Collections. 13 Among these writers and editors was David Kalakaua before his election to the throne. Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 45–58. See also Silva, The Power of the Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 33–4.

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14 My thinking on orality and textuality in Hawaiʻi has been informed by Noelani Arista, “Navigating Uncharted Oceans of Meaning: Kaona as Historical and Interpretive Method,” PMLA 125, no. 3 (May 2010): 663–9; David A. Chang, “The Good Written Word of Life: The Native Hawaiian Appropriation of Textuality,” William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser. 75, no. 2 (April 2018): 237–58. Arista’s article has since been incorporated into her book, The Kingdom and the Republic: Sovereign Hawaiʻi and the Early United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). 15 Sonnet and I anticipated that reactions might fall along these lines, though our meeting with the Museum interns two months before the exhibition opened led us to believe that prevailing student directive would be for more criticality. 16 See Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums, 1–28, 73–122.

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Dismantling the Confederate Landscape: The Case for a New Context By Sarah Beetham

The last few years have been a dramatic time for Confederate monuments. In the context of acts of racial terrorism in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 and Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and amidst increasing political polarization, many activists have called for the removal or recontextualization of Confederate symbols. Dozens of Confederate monuments have been affected. Some have been moved at the behest of city governments, such as New Orleans and Baltimore, while others, like the statue in Durham, North Carolina, have been toppled in acts of political iconoclasm.1 Pushing back against this movement has been a constant litany of dissent. Some of this comes from Neo-Confederate heritage groups, who continue to deny the centrality of slavery to the Civil War and uphold the Confederacy and its supporters as honorable. But even among historians who view the Confederate cause as abhorrent, there have been some who have advocated keeping the monuments in place as tools to teach America’s complicated historical past. Removing the statues, as this argument goes, would be tantamount to “destroying history,” sanitizing the memorial landscape by excising its controversial elements and condemning future Americans to forgetting the past.2 But rather than falling in with advocates for preservation, this chapter will argue that the Confederate monument debate has prompted positive change, providing an important platform for community conversation and political action. Confederate monuments honor an abortive attempt to overthrow the government of the United States in order to establish a nation based on the system of slavery. Communities in the former Confederate states often erected them with the explicit purpose of halting progress toward equal rights for all Americans. They have been subject to dissent from the moment they were first erected, especially from African American communities, and recent calls to remove them have borrowed language from other fights for social justice, including the Black Lives Matter movement. Recent changes, too, are part of a much broader history of material alteration of Civil War monuments and other works of public art. Reckoning with Confederate monuments will not be easy; reacting against the recent debate, many conservative governments in Southern states have passed laws to prevent monument removal.3 But confronting these symbols directly offers communities an opportunity to right historical wrongs and to engage with

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pressing material and political concerns deeply ingrained in the field of public art. This chapter will review the historical argument for removal of Confederate monuments, place the recent debate in the context of the monuments’ material history, and suggest ways in which communities and public art professionals can engage with issues of racial injustice and public sculpture.

Confederate Monuments: Fortifying White Supremacy The Confederate monuments at the center of today’s debates were part of a larger movement to remember the soldiers, statesmen, civilians, and places that participated in the American Civil War. In the North, the process of memorialization began almost immediately after the war ended, encompassing both the war’s famous leaders and its rank-and-file soldiers. But in the war-torn South, little funding was available for memorial sculpture in the first postwar decades. Groups of elite women known as Ladies’ Memorial Associations first focused their attention on locating the graves of the Confederate dead and reburying soldiers in cemeteries specifically designated in their honor. Alongside these efforts, Confederate women placed their earliest soldier monuments in cemeteries to guard the graves of the fallen. But after the overthrow of Reconstruction, white Southerners began to erect monuments in prominent civic locations, typically on the lawn in front of the county courthouse. These monuments varied in content and artistic origin. Some, like Antonin Mercié’s Robert E. Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia, honor military and political leaders of the Confederacy with expensive original statues produced by major academic artists. But many others were dedicated to the rank-and-file Confederate soldier, and these monuments tend to pair bases by local carvers and statuary from German, Italian, or Northern sources.4 Dedicated in 1878, the Richmond County Confederate Monument in Augusta, Georgia, is a particularly elaborate version of the types of memorials that white Southerners erected to honor the Confederate dead (Figure 7.1). Standing at a height of 76 feet, the monument consists of a tall granite column atop a multi-tiered base. A statue of a Confederate soldier at parade rest, rendered in Carrara marble, stands at the apex of the column. Surrounding the base, four additional marble statues represent Generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Thomas R.R. Cobb, and William H.T. Walker. According to local legend, the soldier figure atop the shaft was modeled after Private Berry Benson, a native of South Carolina and resident of Augusta, who became famous for escaping from two different Union prisons during the war. The monument was designed by the Philadelphia firm VanGunder and Young and executed by T. Markwalter of Augusta, with statuary by Antonio Fontana shipped from Italy. It was unveiled on October 31, 1878, amidst tremendous pageantry, with a military parade and speeches by local dignitaries. More than 10,000 Augusta residents attended the ceremony.5 But Augusta’s monument was not simply a tribute to fallen Confederate soldiers. As historian Kathleen Clark has demonstrated, the monument was sited at the center of

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Figure 7.1  T. Markwalter (architect), Antonio Fontana (carving), and VanGunder and Young (design). Richmond County Confederate Monument, Augusta, Georgia, dedicated in 1878. Photograph by the author, April 2012.

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the city’s Broad Street in order to send a message to Black Augustans who had recently begun using the thoroughfare for their own events and celebrations. As the Civil War came to a close, Black residents of the city staged pageants and parades in celebration of Emancipation, the Fourth of July, and other major events with the support of a Republican Reconstruction government. With the return of Democratic control of Georgia, white Southerners increasingly forced these ceremonies indoors, using Confederate monuments to reclaim public space.6 This takeover of space was only one small part of white Southerners’ efforts to overthrow Reconstruction and restore white supremacy. They organized the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Black Americans and their white supporters into giving up on racial equality. They suppressed voters and overturned democratically elected governments. They advanced the Lost Cause falsehood that the Civil War was fought not over slavery, but over the amorphous concept of states’ rights. And in time, they wore down white Northerners to the point that Reconstruction no longer seemed worth pursuing. Confederate monuments, like the one in Augusta, Georgia, borrowed from the same iconography of Roman victory monuments as their Northern counterparts, and this was fitting: the monuments represent a victory for white supremacy over attempts to reform race relations and grant Black Americans equal protection under the law.7 Confederate monuments are further implicated in the horror of lynching because of their placement on the courthouse lawn of Southern county seats. As both John Winberry and Gaines Foster have demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of Confederate monuments erected in the 1890s and beyond were sited on courthouse lawns.8 In these prominent sites, the monuments are positioned in dialogue with courthouses, the center of county government. Housing the criminal court, sheriff ’s office, jail, and other civic offices, the courthouse was the locus of all decisions related to crime and justice, including the breakdown of justice that was lynching. The courthouse itself was often the site of unfairly prosecuted trials and abductions of victims from jail cells. Outside, the courthouse lawn was sometimes a gathering space for lynch mobs, a location for carrying out the murder, or a site for the display of a victim’s body. Juxtaposed with this terrible injustice, the Confederate monument enshrined white supremacy at the heart of Southern government.9 This history is linked to continued injustices that disproportionately affect Black Americans today, including mass incarceration and the police violence that is central to the Black Lives Matter movement. Confederate soldier monuments signal political and racial power structures that perpetuate violence against Black bodies, and the recent debate over their future makes this connection clear. In order to seek a future of racial justice for the nation, it is imperative to rethink the place of these statues in public life.10

Monumental Impermanence: Altering the Landscape One common refrain invoked by opponents to the alteration of Confederate monuments, especially among historians and art historians, has been the idea that removing them would be tantamount to destroying history. Writing for the

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Washington Post, Lawrence Kuznar exemplified this view, arguing that “removing Confederate statues amounts to whitewashing our history, turning our heads away from the inconvenient truths of our past.”11 But what this criticism misses is the relationship between the current moment and the broader history of physical change to public monuments. Since their earliest appearance at the close of the war, Civil War monuments, both Union and Confederate, have been subject to the forces of public opinion, municipal expansion, criminal mischief, and the physical environment. These statues are sited in public spaces with dynamic histories that influence their material circumstances. While conventional wisdom holds that a monument is meant to endure forever—the expression “set in stone” comes to mind—the reality could not be farther from the truth. Monuments in American cities are routinely destroyed by car accidents and weather events, defaced with vandalism, worn down through neglect and exposure, and recontextualized through changes in their surroundings. Monuments are not immutable edifices communicating concrete historical facts throughout time; instead, they adapt to ever-shifting circumstances in fluctuating landscapes. There have been many instances in which Civil War monuments have been damaged accidentally or via malicious defacement. More instructive for the current monument debate, though, is the long history of altering monuments due to new urban technologies or shifting community priorities. Towns and cities routinely relocate Civil War monuments to make way for new municipal construction projects or to protect them from perceived threats. One of the most pervasive threats is the automobile. When citizens’ groups first erected Union and Confederate monuments in civic locations in the late nineteenth century, most forms of transportation were horse powered. Monuments sited at the center of major intersections allowed for prominent visibility along busy thoroughfares. With the introduction of the car, these sites became highly dangerous. By the 1930s, car accidents involving monuments were a significant threat, both to vehicle passengers and to the works of art. In addition, many cities looked to widen their major roads in order to make room for more traffic. For many municipalities, both North and South, the solution to the problem was clear: the monuments would have to be moved.12 The Smithsonian’s Save Outdoor Sculpture! database includes records of at least twenty-three Confederate monuments that have been moved either to alleviate traffic problems or in response to a car accident, all taking place in the mid-twentieth century.13 Some have been shifted only a few yards, but others have been taken from prominent locations and reinstalled in public parks or cemeteries. Monuments in Hawkinsville, Georgia, and Ripley, Mississippi, were among the many that were moved from major intersections to the nearby courthouse lawn following major damage from a car accident. In Hawkinsville, a car hit the monument in 1935, knocking off the left arm from a statue of Stonewall Jackson standing at its base. Hawkinsville officials relocated the monument soon afterward, but the statue remained armless until 1981.14 A truck toppled Ripley’s Confederate monument in 1970, breaking the base into pieces and decapitating the statue. At first, the pieces languished in a vacant lot, but in 1984, a local stonecutter reassembled the sculpture with ninety percent of its original material.15 In both of these cases, the monuments were relocated after the accident

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in order to make the landscape safer for both the statue and the people of the town. Similar reasonable accommodations are common responses to monument accidents. If city governments choose to move monuments in order to make practical improvements to the physical landscape, then they also can alter or relocate them when they no longer align with the community’s values. Confederate monuments have long stood for white supremacy and the oppression of Black Americans, and many communities are finally beginning to confront that painful legacy. Making changes to these objects is a way to give physical expression to much-needed conversation. The interventions that have been proposed or carried out fall into two broad categories: recontextualizing the monuments in situ with new explanatory text, or with temporary or permanent art installations, and relocating them to a less prominent site, such as a museum, battlefield, cemetery, or memorial park. Both of these strategies have already been employed at sites across the country with varying degrees of effectiveness.16 Recontextualization is often proposed as the compromise strategy between preservation and removal. At the University of Mississippi, a Confederate monument has been marked with an explanatory plaque twice, the first installed in March 2016 and the second following in June. University administrators ordered a replacement when the initial plaque composed by trustees failed to condemn slavery.17 In September 2019, the city of Decatur, Georgia, installed a plaque protesting a state law keeping Confederate monuments in place and condemning the Confederate cause in the strongest terms.18 In 2011, a few years before the national debate began in earnest, citizens of Easton, Maryland, erected a statue of Frederick Douglass on the courthouse lawn opposite a Confederate monument that had been on the site since 1916.19 Reactions to these interventions have been mixed, as it is debatable whether any plaque or statuary can interrupt and counteract the visual impact of towering equestrian statues and triumphal columns. These efforts at recontextualization nonetheless are an important phenomenon in coming to terms with Confederate monuments’ racist legacy. A more radical solution is to remove the monuments from prominent civic spaces, by either relocating them to less visible sites, moving them into storage, or deaccessioning them from city public sculpture collections. One of the first cities in recent years to remove its Confederate monuments was New Orleans, where Mayor Mitch Landrieu began the process in June 2015, less than a week after the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, which killed nine African Americans. Crediting a 2014 conversation with jazz musician Wynton Marsalis as his inspiration, he targeted statues dedicated to Robert E. Lee, P.G.T. Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, and an 1874 uprising by white supremacists known as the Battle of Liberty Place. By May 2017, after much legal wrangling and acts of violence by monument supporters, the city contracted workers to remove the statues and place them in city storage, with their ultimate fate to be decided at some later point. On May 19, as workers were removing the statue of Lee, the last of the four, Landrieu delivered a speech on the legacy of the Lost Cause and racism in America that has been widely shared in the national monument debate.20 Following the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, which were prompted by that city’s plans to remove its monuments, many other cities began to dismantle their Confederate

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symbols. Baltimore removed four Confederate statues from their pedestals and placed them in storage just days after the Charlottesville riots.21 Two Florida cities, Orlando and Gainesville, relocated Confederate soldier monuments from courthouse squares to nearby cemeteries, keeping them on view but in a less central context.22 In many other cities, talks to recontextualize or remove monuments are ongoing. These difficult conversations provide an important opportunity to reckon with the painful legacy that Confederate statues continue to promote within their communities.

Public Engagement and the Monument Debate In On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill investigates a series of early twentieth-century lynchings on the Eastern Shore in Maryland with the goal of finding a method by which communities might begin to come to terms with violent events in their past. She meditates at length on the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions after apartheid in South Africa and concludes that in order for reconciliation to work, it must be carried out locally by community members. She writes: Reconciliation cannot be achieved at the national level. Historically, racism was felt, lived, and perpetuated locally. Reconciliation, therefore, must also be local … No “national conversation” can take the place of a locally based dialogue in which members of a discrete community come together to talk about how specific instances of racial violence affected their community.23

Ifill’s thesis could just as readily be applied to the conversation surrounding Confederate monuments. It is unlikely that a monolithic national policy will ever be devised to decide the fate of all of the remaining monuments, as they are currently controlled by a patchwork of local and state laws in jurisdictions with widely varying political allegiances. The people most qualified to make decisions about these monuments are those who are forced to confront their presence in their daily lives. If the debate over Confederate monuments makes space for difficult conversations about history and racism, it will be a valuable step toward reconciliation at the local level. The aftermath of a freak car accident in Demopolis, Alabama, provides a model for how this might work. In July 2016, a police car crashed into the base of the city’s monument, leaving nothing but a pair of boots standing on the pedestal. The officer driving the car had fallen asleep at the wheel, and the monument’s precarious position in the center of a busy traffic circle made it a prime target. The shattered monument forced the people of Demopolis to reckon with its destruction alongside postCharleston debates about Confederate symbols. They faced three possible options: to restore the Confederate monument to its original location, to allow the accident to remove the monument from view permanently, or to find some compromise that would allow both sides of the monument debate some satisfaction. Demopolis’s population is roughly evenly divided between Black and white residents, who are grouped in

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neighborhoods on the east and west sides of town, respectively. Before the accident, the two groups had commented little on the monument, but after it fell both sides were surprised to hear their neighbors’ vehement opinions on the matter. Many older white residents championed the statue as a piece of history honoring the legacy of their Confederate ancestors, and many Black residents of Demopolis expressed shock at this reverence for the Confederacy and voiced long-suppressed concerns about the legacy of slavery and racism. Speaking to the Washington Post, Demopolis resident Reginald Gracie articulated a key phenomenon experienced in so many cases in which monuments are destroyed in sudden accidents. He admitted that he had given the statue little thought over the years he had spent living in Demopolis, but after the crash, everything changed: “Then an accident occurs and you start hearing all this stuff about [how] someone wanted to destroy their ‘history.’ It changes the conversation, because then you find out the spirit that flows through that monument is still flowing through these people today.” The accident brought sentiments long buried to the surface.24 Demopolis’s City Council met in April 2017 to vote on a plan for the monument. Months earlier, a commission of civic leaders with six white and six Black members had recommended that the city opt not to restore or replace the Confederate statue on its pedestal. Instead, they suggested a compromise, keeping the base with inscriptions honoring the Confederacy, but topping it with a new obelisk transforming the monument into a memorial to veterans of all wars. The Council voted 3–2 to adopt the committee’s proposal, but soon afterward, the town’s plans were briefly put on hold when Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a law preventing the alteration of any public monuments or markers more than forty years old. Some supporters of restoring the statue questioned whether the new law would prevent the city’s proposal from moving forward and asked the Alabama attorney general’s office to make a ruling on the matter. In early December 2017, the attorney general issued a statement that because the accident had happened before the law went into effect, Demopolis’s monument had ceased to exist at that point, and thus the law’s protections did not affect the city’s plans. A year later, the new obelisk was quietly installed (Figure 7.2). Carved with swags of granite drapery and tassels, the obelisk bears the simple inscription “FOR ALL THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN,” repeated on its north and south faces. The new text leaves meaning up to the interpretation of the viewer, and rhetorically does not depart from the historical inscriptions honoring the Confederate dead. By choosing not to restore the figure of the soldier, the City Council of Demopolis materially altered its impact as a visual symbol.25 While the Confederate monument in Demopolis might not have been targeted for removal if it were not for the car accident that destroyed it, the compromise reached by the city’s citizens is a provocative model for structuring resolutions for Confederate monuments. Car accidents involving controversial monuments are important to the overall monument debate precisely because they cut through ideology and force practical solutions: the accidents are generally not politically motivated, and the monument is often beyond repair. Before the accident in Demopolis, residents had no plans to rethink the monument’s place at the center of town. After the statue’s

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Figure 7.2  Demopolis Confederate Monument, Demopolis, Alabama, originally dedicated in 1910, damaged in car accident in 2016, reconstructed in 2018. Photograph by the author, March 2019.

destruction upended the town’s delicate racial balance, city officials went to work finding a solution. Debates over the monument took place over several months, and, during that time, people on both sides of the issue got to know one another and learned a great deal about their neighbors’ long-buried beliefs. The accident revealed that a town that had prided itself on racial harmony still had a long way to go. Transforming the monument into a memorial to veterans of all wars was an imperfect solution, and one that led to hurt feelings on both sides. Ultimately, both supporters and opponents of the monument have seen this solution as a partial victory and, in attempting to seek a compromise, the citizens of Demopolis have engaged in important work reckoning with America’s history of slavery and racism. That this discussion was allowed to occur at the local level without interference from the state government further emphasizes that solutions for controversial monuments are best devised by the citizens who encounter them every day. While the Confederate monument debate has a strong national component, local people deal with these statues on a day-to-day basis, in terms of both their content and the logistical constraints they place on the landscape. If the monument debate is to yield positive change, communities and their elected officials will have to come together to seek workable solutions.

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Art Historical Voices: Getting Involved There are many opportunities for art historians, art educators and their students, and public art professionals to get involved in the debate over controversial monuments. The national conversation has foregrounded public art on a mass scale and has drawn widespread interest. In an educational context, the time is ripe for symposia, conference sessions, lesson plans, and specialized courses that address the current moment. Outside the academy, art history professionals, whether individually or with students, should engage directly with community conversations concerning these memorials. Three possible avenues of engagement are: documenting the existing memorial landscape, advocating for solutions for controversial monuments, and proposing new uses for public space that engage with underrepresented communities or histories. Documenting the landscape is an important step for preserving the memory of civic spaces that may be in flux. Documentation may include photographing monuments and their surroundings from as many angles as possible; recording damage, treatment, or removal; and researching the history of local monuments in libraries or archives. Maintaining this visual record is important for future researchers and would be a worthwhile activity for students in art history classes. Getting involved in community discussions regarding nearby controversial monuments is also a powerful way to share art historical expertise and to engage meaningfully in public space. These conversations are taking place in town hall meetings, public protests, and the courts. Protest action should be documented as a significant event that inscribes new meaning onto the work of art. Both individually and in groups, it is also important to speak out on monuments in written channels: social media, blogging, media interviews, and op-eds. Finally, the recent movement to rethink controversial monuments has opened up new opportunities to reimagine public space. Community movements such as Paper Monuments in New Orleans and Monument Lab, based in Philadelphia with partners in numerous other cities, have proposed new ways of thinking about public art, from the materials and structures used to the narratives that have been or should be celebrated.26 The current moment is a fraught one for public art, but it is also an opportunity: to engage in difficult and necessary conversations about racial justice in America, to introduce the tenets of art historical discourse to a broader public at a time when humanities funding is in jeopardy, and to promote a public space that acknowledges and embraces all Americans.

Postscript I handed in the final draft of this chapter in mid-May 2020, just weeks before protests over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited a powerful new wave of iconoclasm and public outcry directed toward Confederate monuments. In June 2020 alone, more than thirty Confederate statues were either toppled by protesters or removed deliberately by state and local governments, including the DeKalb County Confederate Monument mentioned in this chapter. Another eighteen locations

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across the South, including the University of Mississippi, have announced plans to review or relocate their monuments. At this writing, public opinion has turned decisively away from recontextualizing problematic statues in situ and toward relocating them to cemeteries, museums, or statue parks. Furthermore, the conversation about statuary in American public landscapes has expanded beyond Confederate monuments to include statues honoring other problematic figures, focusing primarily on those who participated in the slave trade or in mass genocide of Native Americans. The monument debates are likely to retain a major place in American cultural consciousness for years to come. But even as the terrain of this debate continues to shift, one important point remains paramount: wherever possible, local communities should be empowered to make their own decisions regarding the future of their public monuments. The citizens who live with these statues every day should be the ones to decide whether they remain in the public eye. The destruction of monuments in the context of the 2020 police brutality protests should be seen as a total rejection of efforts by individual states to wrest control of public space away from the people. Public art practitioners should take the lessons of this moment to heart.

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Tegan Wendland, “With Lee Statue’s Removal, Another Battle of New Orleans Comes to a Close,” NPR, May 20, 2017, accessed June 27, 2019, https://www.npr. org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-neworleans-comes-to-a-close; Fenit Nirappil, “Baltimore Hauls Away Four Confederate Monuments after Overnight Removal,” Washington Post, August 16, 2017, accessed June 27, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/baltimorebegins-taking-down-confederate-statues/2017/08/16/f32aa26e-8265-11e7-b35915a3617c767b_story.html?utm_term=.5f2ab64b7ba5; Maggie Astor, “Protesters in Durham Topple a Confederate Monument,” New York Times, August 14, 2017, accessed June 27, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/protesters-indurham-topple-a-confederate-monument.html. For example, see Alfred L. Brophy, “Why We Shouldn’t Pull Down All Those Confederate Memorials,” Newsweek, July 10, 2015, accessed June 27, 2019, https:// www.newsweek.com/why-we-shouldnt-pull-down-all-those-confederatememorials-352222; Lawrence A. Kuznar, “I Detest Our Confederate Monuments. But They Should Remain,” Washington Post, August 18, 2017, accessed June 24, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-detest-our-confederate-monumentsbut-they-should-remain/2017/08/18/13d25fe8-843c-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story. html?utm_term=.ef4443f92d20; Jonathan Zimmerman, “Historians Should End Silence on Silent Sam,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 17, 2018, accessed June 27, 2019, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Historians-Should-EndSilence/245346; and Michele Bogart, “In Defense of ‘Racist’ Monuments: These Are Works of Public Art with Complex and Specific Histories,” New York Daily News, August 24, 2017, accessed May 15, 2020, https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ defense-racist-monuments-article-1.3436672.

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For instance, see Naomi Shavin, “States Are Using Preservation Laws to Block the Removal of Confederate Monuments,” Artsy, April 24, 2018, accessed July 10, 2019, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-states-preservation-laws-block-removalconfederate-monuments; “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy,” Southern Poverty Law Center, February 1, 2019, accessed July 10, 2019, https://www. splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy. 4 See Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997); Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, eds., Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003); Thomas J. Brown, The Public Art of Civil War Commemoration: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2004); Caroline E. Janney, Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); and Sarah Beetham, “Sculpting the Citizen Soldier: Reproduction and National Memory, 1865–1917” (PhD diss., University of Delaware, 2014). 5 Edward J. Cashin, The Story of Augusta (Augusta, GA: Richmond County Board of Education, 1980), 148; Frank McKenney, The Standing Army: History of Georgia’s County Confederate Monuments (Alpharetta, GA: W.H. Wolfe Associates, 1993), 99–103. 6 Kathleen Clark, “Making History: African American Commemorative Celebrations in Augusta, Georgia, 1865–1913,” in Monuments to the Lost Cause, eds. Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 51–5. 7 On the Reconstruction-era violence that undergirded the erection of Confederate memorials, see David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001); and Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1988). 8 John Winberry, “‘Lest We Forget’: The Confederate Monument and the Southern Townscape,” Southeastern Geographer 23 (1983): 107–21; reprint Southeastern Geographer 55, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 19–31; and Gaines Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, reprint: 1988), 273. 9 For the link between courthouse squares and lynching, see Sherrilyn Ifill, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 8–9; W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); and Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Random House, 2002). 10 For instance, see Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010); Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” Atlantic, October 2015, accessed June 27, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-blackfamily-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/; and Isabel Wilkerson, “Mike Brown’s Shooting and Jim Crow Lynchings Have Too Much in Common. It’s Time for America to Own Up,” Guardian, August 25, 2014, accessed June 27, 2019, https:// www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/25/mike-brown-shooting-jim-crowlynchings-in-common.

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11 Kuznar, “I Detest Our Confederate Monuments. But They Should Remain.” 12 See, for example, Taylor Rapalyea, “Work Underway to Move Civil War Monument in Peabody,” Salem News, May 27, 2016, accessed April 18, 2019, https://www. salemnews.com/news/local_news/work-underway-to-move-civil-war-monumentin-peabody/article_7bc953cf-fc24-5268-93d1-01dbbc0cc7e0.html; Shannon Lilly, “Damage to the Confederate Memorial in Milledgeville Caused by Car Accident,” WGXA, August 5, 2016, accessed June 3, 2019, https://wgxa.tv/news/local/damageto-the-confederate-memorial-in-milledgeville-caused-by-car-accident; Mary Jordan, “Wreck Topples Old Town Bone of Contention,” Washington Post, August 21, 1988; and Cameron McWhirter, “Fall of Confederate Statue Ignites Civil War in Its Home,” Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2012, accessed July 29, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/ articles/SB10001424052702303812904577293590627745290. See also Sarah Beetham, “From Spray Cans to Minivans: Contesting the Legacy of Confederate Soldier Monuments in the Era of ‘Black Lives Matter,’” Public Art Dialogue 6, no. 1 (2016): 20–6. 13 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Inventory of American Sculpture, record numbers: 76000843 (Laurel, MS); AL000116 (Ozark, AL); AL000311 (Union Springs, AL); GA000002 (Douglas, GA); GA000011 (Americus, GA); GA000490 (Albany, GA); GA000513 (Cordele, GA); GA000535 (Hawkinsville, GA); GA000557 (Milledgeville, GA); GA000558 (Montezuma, GA); GA000561 (Perry, GA); GA000602 (Tifton, GA); MS000367 (Aberdeen, MS); NC000063 (Albemarle, NC); NC000119 (Hendersonville, NC); NC000423 (Fayetteville, NC); SC000050 (Camden, SC); SC000131 (Spartanburg, SC); SC000175 (Winnsboro, SC); SC000196 (Georgetown, SC); VA000181 (Hillsville, VA); VA000356 (Charlotte Courthouse, VA); and WV000091 (Lewisburg, WV). 14 Frank McKenney, The Standing Army: History of Georgia’s County Confederate Monuments (Alpharetta, GA: W.H. Wolfe Associates, 1993), 95–6. 15 William Thomas, “Johnny Reb Stands Forgotten, but Not Dead,” Commercial Appeal, December 3, 1983; Ray Goodman, “Once Again: Confederate Soldier Stands Guard over the Courthouse Square,” Southern Sentinel, August 20, 1983. 16 For example, see Holland Cotter, “We Need to Move, Not Destroy, Confederate Monuments,” New York Times, August 20, 2017, accessed July 11, 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2017/08/20/arts/design/we-need-to-move-not-destroy-confederatemonuments.html; Janeen Bryant, Benjamin Filene, Louis Nelson, Jennifer Scott, and Suzanne Seriff, “Are Museums the Right Home for Confederate Monuments?” Smithsonian.com, May 7, 2018, accessed July 11, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag. com/history/are-museums-right-home-confederate-monuments-180968969/; Josh Sanburn, “A Confederate Monument Solution, with Context,” TIME.com, June 22, 2017, accessed July 11, 2019, https://time.com/4828105/a-confederate-monumentsolution-with-context/; and Menachem Wecker, “Confederate Monuments and the Power of Absence,” Religion & Politics, October 31, 2017, accessed July 11, 2019, https://religionandpolitics.org/2017/10/31/confederate-monuments-and-the-powerof-absence/. 17 Steven Gagliano, “Confederate Statue Plaque Officially Revised,” Hottytoddy.com, October 13, 2016, accessed June 26, 2019, https://hottytoddy.com/2016/10/13/ confederate-statue-plaque-officially-revised/. 18 Tia Mitchell, “Marker Would Detail Racist Origin of DeKalb’s Confederate Monument,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 13, 2019, accessed April 17,

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Teachable Monuments 2019, https://www.ajc.com/news/local-govt–politics/marker-would-detail-racistorigin-dekalb-confederate-monument/5ZhS525X3ohgk2ujWHDT8L/; Maya T. Prabhu, “Georgia House Approves Bill Protecting Confederate, State Monuments,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 28, 2019, accessed April 17, 2019, https://www. ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/georgia-house-approves-bill-protectingconfederate-state-monuments/PGE0mvGwfR7w6TVI8RG6XP/; and Tia Mitchell, “Marker Supplies Historical Context for DeKalb’s Confederate Monument,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 19, 2019, accessed May 29, 2020, https://www.ajc. com/news/local/marker-supplies-historical-context-for-dekalb-confederate-monume nt/3mGyZ6ITzCEGVgz785O1zJ/. Ifill, 4–15; “Statue of Frederick Douglass Arrives after Years of Debate,” NBC News, June 16, 2011, accessed January 24, 2019, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43430504/ns/ travel-destination_travel/t/statue-frederick-douglass-arrives-after-years-debate/#. XEoIMFxKjs4; Frederick Douglass Honor Society, Douglass Returns: The Dedication, June 16–19, 2011 (Easton, MD: Frederick Douglass Honor Society, 2011). Mitch Landrieu, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History (New York: Viking, 2018), 161–200, 217–27. Nicholas Fandos, Russell Goldman, and Jess Bidgood, “Baltimore Mayor Had Statues Removed in ‘Best Interest of My City,’” New York Times, August 16, 2017, accessed July 9, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues. html. Harry Sayer, “‘Johnny Reb’ Confederate Statue Set for October Debut in Orlando Cemetery,” Orlando Sentinel, August 25, 2017, accessed February 25, 2019, https:// www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-johnny-reb-statue-greenwoodcemetery-20170822-story.html; Jeff Weiner, “‘Johnny Reb’ Confederate Statue Rebuilt at Greenwood Cemetery,” Orlando Sentinel, December 6, 2017, accessed February 25, 2019, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-johnnyreb-statue-rebuilt-greenwood-cemetery-20171206-story.html; and Andrew Caplan, “Confederate Statue Removed from Downtown Gainesville,” Gainesville Sun, August 14, 2017, accessed February 25, 2019, https://www.gainesville.com/news/20170814/ confederate-statue-removed-from-downtown-gainesville. Ifill, 127. David Montgomery, “After the Fall,” Washington Post, July 20, 2017, accessed March 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2017/07/20/a-carcrash-topples-a-confederate-statue-and-forces-a-southern-town-to-confrontitspast/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e1d57c43e983. Montgomery, “After the Fall”; and Robert Blankenship, “AG Opinion: City May Move Ahead on Statue Plans,” Demopolis Times, December 4, 2017, accessed March 12, 2019, https://www.demopolistimes.com/2017/12/04/ag-opinion-city-may-moveahead-on-statue-plans/. Paper Monuments, accessed July 11, 2019, https://www.papermonuments.org/; Monument Lab, accessed July 11, 2019, https://monumentlab.com/.

8

Learning from Louisville: John Breckenridge Castleman, His Statue, and a Public Sphere Revisited By Chris Reitz

In the fall of 2017, the Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, Greg Fischer, formed a commission to develop criteria for evaluating whether monuments in the city’s collection could be interpreted as “honoring bigotry, racism or slavery.”1 He was hardly the first mayor to organize such a committee. Under increased public pressure to make decisions about long-standing, conflicted monuments (many featuring or celebrating Confederate soldiers), cities including New York City and Durham, North Carolina, outsourced their conservation responsibilities to temporary groups of citizen-experts. I was one such citizen-expert, selected for my work in public art and modern and contemporary art history.2 Our commission was not tasked with recommending monuments for preservation or removal. Instead we were charged with determining criteria that could be used by elected officials to make decisions about contested artworks in the nearly 400-object public collection. One monument in particular, a bronze equestrian statue of General John Breckenridge Castleman (erected 1913) (Figure 8.1), dominated our public meetings and debates. The many public hearings held to gather Louisvillians’ opinion on monuments in general turned into referenda on the historical figure of John Castleman in particular. Accordingly, Castleman will dominate this chapter too, in part because he became something of a case study for our group, and in part because he provides a particularly generative case study for understanding how monuments and historical markers challenge some of our most sacred and (it turns out) fragile ideas about public space and history— ideas about democracy, context, and access. This is because the Castleman monument confounds most of our established evaluative criteria. The man served as a Confederate soldier, but his monument was erected based on his public service work following the war, service that included the establishment of a park system that remains one of Louisville’s defining features. Moreover, Castleman was something of a southern progressive, one who very often voiced support for the causes of Black Louisvillians even while he enforced the Jim Crow laws of the land—indeed, he was often praised by Black Louisvillians for his work.

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Figure 8.1  Hinton Perry, John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville, Kentucky, 1913. The debate over the monument was provoked, in part, by a series of vandalisms to the monument. After the first round was cleaned off of the statute the vandals struck again, and the city decided to keep the damage in place until a decision we reached about the statue’s fate. Photograph by author.

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This case study is divided into three sections. The first section covers the historical record on John Breckenridge Castleman and the erection of his monument. It describes the Castleman statue as a particularly problematic one—a monument to an unrepentant Confederate soldier whose post-Civil War public works were his greatest contribution to the city. The second investigates the possibility for creating an accessible and equitable public dialogue about the maintenance or removal of a monument to a wealthy man who owned other people. The third section details the outcome of the Louisville debate.

Part One: John Breckenridge Castleman Castleman was born in June of 1841 on the family’s plantation, “Castleton,” near Lexington, Kentucky. The estate included crops and a horse farm, gardens, the family mansion, and a full staff of enslaved laborers, among them “Uncle Ben, the head cook” and “Aunt Jemima, the head maid.”3 In his memoir, Active Service (1917), Castleman describes his family’s relationship to slave labor in affectionate, if defensive, terms: “These slaves were part of every family. Their work was not hard, and their hours of leisure were many.”4 To support his claims, Castleman provides a number of anecdotes about the happiness and independence of the slaves he knew as a child, and cites a 1904 newspaper article about the funeral of one of his family’s former slaves, a funeral that Castleman and his wife attended, as evidence of the respect that the Castleman family held for the men and women they forced into labor.5 The central concern of the Castleman monument debate, and the defining event in Castleman’s memoir, is the matter of his participation in the Confederate Army. Kentucky declared itself neutral at the beginning of the Civil War, although it eventually fell under Union control. Nevertheless, many Kentuckians volunteered to support the armies of the Northern or Southern States. Castleman was one such volunteer. When the war broke out, he traveled to Arkansas to, in his words, “arrange affairs as to give my life to the Confederate cause,” but was instructed to return to Lexington, where he joined with Captain John H. Morgan’s “Lexington Rifles.”6 Morgan’s squadron began its war efforts in Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg. From there they were tasked with riding into Kentucky—neutral territory that the squadron knew well—in order to create panic and draw Union forces away from the front lines. Morgan was under strict orders to remain in Kentucky, but from the start he had no intention to do so. Instead, he mounted a campaign to terrorize the Union well into their territory. He led his squadron of raiders, including Castleman, across the Ohio River into Indiana and eventually into Ohio and West Virginia. Along the way, the raiders stole (and burned) steamboats, destroyed a rail station, and killed and plundered civilian businesses. They were, in a word, terrorists, operating outside of the authority of any standing army and outside of the rules of war. Morgan’s raid was ultimately a failure. He was captured, escaped from prison, returned to the South, and was later killed. But the spirit of his behind-enemylines-style terrorism lived on in his disciples Thomas Hines and Castleman. Hines

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developed a plot to free captive Confederate soldiers in Union territory after the fall of Morgan’s raid. With the approval of the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Hines led a group of soldiers, including Castleman, to Canada and then down into Chicago. There they dressed in plain clothes and collected intelligence on Union prisons and on high-profile buildings and events that could serve as targets for Confederate terror/ arson campaigns. Nicknamed “The Northwest Conspiracy,” the project’s ultimate goal was the liberation of hundreds of captive Confederate soldiers, although it was unsuccessful. Castleman was captured, tried for espionage and war crimes, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, President Lincoln postponed the execution, and Castleman was exiled from the United States. He then traveled throughout Europe, enjoyed a bit of British poetry, and feigned studying medicine in Paris before he was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1866 and allowed to return to the United States.7 I have drawn here entirely from John Castleman’s memoir both because it is the most comprehensive published account of his early life and because it provides a particularly sympathetic description of his military service. Yet despite the author’s rosy view of slave life and the Confederate cause, his autobiography confirms some of the most problematic facts of the man’s life. First, he fought for the Confederate Army voluntarily. Second, he was an active participant in Morgan’s Raiders, a group that defied orders from Confederate leadership in order to wage a campaign of terror into Union territory. Third, he served as a spy and terrorist as part of the “Northwest Conspiracy” and was sentenced to death for war crimes. Beyond these facts, the memoir also affirms Castleman’s rather heinous position on slavery. Nowhere in the text does he disavow the institution of slavery (in fact, he defends it), and at no point does he express regret for his participation in the Confederate cause, despite the fact that the memoir was written more than fifty years after the end of the Civil War. Instead, the book is dedicated to his fellow Morgan’s Raiders and describes them in adulatory terms. On these points, there can be no debate. I’ll add here to Castleman’s own account a fact about his burial, which took place in 1918 in Louisville’s Cave Hill Cemetery. As noted by the Courier-Journal, Louisville’s paper of record, Castleman’s casket was draped with both the American and the Confederate flags.8 Given all of these facts, it is quite clear that Castleman’s identity was bound up with his service in the Confederate Army, and he strongly identified with his fellow Confederate soldiers long after the end of the war.

Castleman’s Service to Louisville If I am pointed in my criticism of Castleman’s Confederate affiliation, it is because I am also rather moved by his dedication to Louisville following his return to the United States. In his capacity as a military man, he reorganized the Louisville Legion, a volunteer—and, under Castleman, highly organized—regiment that helped keep the peace in Louisville. He also served as a Colonel at the beginning of the Spanish– American War and was quickly promoted to brigadier general. But beyond military service, Castleman was a public servant. His love of horses eventually brought him

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to leadership of the American Saddle Bred Association; he served as a delegate for the Democratic Party and often advised on political issues without running for political office. Finally, and most notably, Castleman’s love of nature drove his abiding investment in the Louisville parks system, and he spent more than twenty-five years as President of the Board of Park Commissioners. As noted in the Courier-Journal in 1918, “Father of the park system of Louisville” is a title often applied to Gen. John B. Castleman. This was because of the extraordinary labors and unceasing vigilance which he gave to the parks, roads and trees in his capacity as the president of the Board of Park Commissioners, and the many gives of money and land which he lavished on the work of extending and beautifying the public playgrounds.9

Under Castleman’s tenure the park system grew considerably, and by all historical accounts this growth, and the parks’ maintenance, was facilitated by the dedication and hard work of the board president.10

Erection of the Monument and Controversy In 1910 one of Castleman’s friends, Charles Grainger, began to promote the idea of honoring the still-alive Castleman with a bronze equestrian statue. The original statement of intent makes clear that this honor was earned by decades of service to the city’s parks.11 In order to fund the statue a committee was established to solicit “subscriptions” from the public (in the form of monetary promises), which were published in the Courier-Journal through 1911 (each donor and the amount donated was put in print). Thus, unlike many of the Confederate statues currently under debate, Castleman’s monument was not funded by a state agency, nor by an interstate Confederate support group. Instead, it was the result of a citizen-led campaign facilitated by a bourgeois public sphere composed of moneyed Louisville residents and the paper of record.12 The committee to fund the statue then composed a subcommittee to select a sculptor. This subcommittee sent letters to a cohort of nationally prominent sculptors requesting models for review.13 Ultimately, the subcommittee selected a design by the New York sculptor Hinton Perry.14 They also determined that the statue should be placed within the bounds of Cherokee Park at one of its major entrances.15 After a number of construction delays, the monument was dedicated on November 8, 1913, to much fanfare—approximately 2,000 people attended, including Castleman, and there were musical events, speakers, and a parade.16 In addition to supporting the committee’s fundraising efforts, the Courier-Journal also featured opinion pieces on Castleman and his statue prior to its erection, and then did so again following Castleman’s death in 1918. Two of these are particularly relevant to the monument debate. The first, published anonymously on April 9, 1910, argues that Castleman’s reputation is so secure that the city need not fear the public will ever demand that his statue be removed:

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It would be unfortunate to have to pull a statue from its pedestal and cast it in the junk pile because of the honored individual having failed to live up to the dignity of the design. But as Gen. Castleman is not a political hero who may be damned to-morrow by those who applaud him to-day and as he will certainly not turn traitor to the parks, why not set him up in bronze now instead of waiting to pay him the compliment when he shall be beyond the bourne?17

We might be tempted to protest that, even if this opinion piece articulates the position of the city’s wealthy and educated white Courier-Journal readers, it does little to account for the whole of Louisville public opinion, which likely included the position (undoubtedly held by Black residents) that the Confederate soldier was indeed a traitor. While this certainly may have been the case, another op-ed, this one written by a Black Louisvillian, J. Raymond Harris, on the occasion of Castleman’s death, argues the opposite: that despite his Confederate service, Castleman did more for Black Louisville than any Union soldier: All of the citizenry has sustained an irreparable loss, but to the colored people … his passing to “the shadow land” is a calamity. Gen. Castleman gave the vigor and strength of his early manhood to “The Cause” [the Confederacy], which, had it been triumphant, would have delayed the unshackling of 3,000,000 human beings, yet no hero on the other side ever held so high a niche in the hearts and minds of colored Kentuckians …. Whenever, in the course of affairs, injustice of proscription raised its hand against us, Gen. Castleman’s voice has been heard pleading for toleration and amicable adjustment.

Castleman’s memoir makes clear the racist paternalism he afforded the enslaved men and women of Castleton, and this paternalism, which would manifest as sympathy and kindness for Black citizens rather than liberty and equality, would continue to inform Castleman’s public service. Unfortunately, the political and social machinery of post-Reconstruction Kentucky rarely offered either equality or sympathy for its Black residents, and so Castleman’s paternalism was accepted as advocacy in his day. For example, when a white noncommissioned soldier refused to salute a superior Black officer in 1917, Castleman went on the record in support of the Black officer. “I unhesitating say that I would or will, at any time, salute any officer, superior or inferior, who salutes me, without regard to the color of his skin.”18 Castleman’s firm advocacy is heartening, though tempered by the fact that it follows from military guidelines and not a moral position on race and honor.19 This tension between, on the one hand, Castleman’s historically relative progressive politics of racial inclusion and, on the other, his problematic maintenance of a racist status quo proved particularly generative for public debate at the Monument Commission meetings. Many times over we heard that it is unreasonable to hold historical figures accountable to contemporary social convention, and that by all

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measure Castleman was a progressive on race. Accusing him of racism now, the argument goes, amounts to historical revisionism. The debate grew particularly acrimonious over the matter of a park tennis court and one policy position in particular, which helped set the terms of segregation in Louisville’s park system. In the early 1880s the Castleman-led Park Board began installing tennis courts for Black residents in order to provide them with separate facilities (the parks already had tennis courts). In 1914, a group of white residents living near one of the parks complained to the Commissioners, arguing “the park should be given over to the white persons exclusively.”20 The Commissioners disagreed, claiming instead that “the negro has as much right in the public parks as the white man, and that with a view to keeping the negroes off the tennis courts used by white persons it was thought best to establish the courts for use by negros only.”21 To Castleman’s critics, this decision establishes Castleman’s role in the segregation of the Louisville’s parks. Where he could have ensured that all facilities remain open to all Louisville residents regardless of race, he instead opted for the racist program of “separate but equal.” To Castleman’s defenders, however, this decision evidences a much more nuanced resistance to a rising tide of segregation. Where many Louisvillians insisted that the parks themselves be segregated (some parks for white people, some for Black people), Castleman was resolved to the idea that all the parks remain open to all residents. Separating the tennis courts, according to this account, was the only way he could successfully keep all parks open to Black residents. Absolute segregation—the division of parks into Blacks and whites only—happened only after Castleman’s departure and would have been abhorrent to the General. As Thomas Owen, a scholar of Louisville history, notes, on the occasion of the 1924 segregation of the parks, a group of prominent Black Louisvillians wrote a letter to the Courier-Journal arguing that Castleman would have never allowed such a thing: “General Castleman, the father of our park system, steadfastly refused to allow any kind of racial segregation in the parks of the city and this policy has been followed until the present Board issued its segregation order.”22 By “segregation” here these men mean the total exclusion of Black residents from white parks. According to our contemporary vernacular, however, Castleman was indeed a segregationist, one who had no reservations about separating Black and white facilities.23 The question of Castleman’s segregationism is crucial to the Louisville debate because many of Castleman’s defenders argue that the monument is not a Confederate statue but rather a tribute to a man who contributed positively to Louisville’s parks. That argument is quickly undone if we consider Castleman to be the architect of the park’s racial segregation. Yet as with the question of the “Confederateness” of the statue, the historical record is not so easily parsed. Castleman was a Confederate soldier and an American general; he was an aggressive advocate for the parks and a vocal supporter of Black Louisvillians and Black access to public resources. He was also a staunch defender of the oppressive racial policies of Jim Crow, and his memoir suggests that he was never particularly troubled by slavery or its persistent influence over Black life and liberty. So what do we do with his statue?

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Part Two: The Democratic Public Sphere and the Persistence of Inequality What is a monument’s relationship to history? Does it preserve historical facts and carry them through a perpetually contemporary public? Is it a historical object itself? Does it manipulate our history, creating a hero where there were once only complex networks of influence and ideology? I have written elsewhere at length about what I think monuments do.24 Citing Alois Riegl’s work on conservation, I believe that monuments are particularly good at maintaining their “intentional value.”25 Whatever else the Castleman statue has become (neighborhood emblem, symbol of Confederate legacy, of segregation, of a redlined neighborhood, artifact), it is always a celebration, in our contemporary moment, of the life of the historic John Breckenridge Castleman first. So when a monument’s legitimacy is challenged—when the public demands a reevaluation of the statue’s place in the city—the first question we ask should be: “would we, today, put up a statue to this person?” The problem, however, is that I don’t know who should be answering it. One option is “everyone.” In the course of our public hearings, which took place at least once per month from February to June of 2018, we often heard (mostly from people in support of keeping the statue) that the city should simply vote on whether to keep or remove the monument. This sounds fine in theory, but beyond the logistical issues of a ballot initiative (primarily cost and voter bandwidth), there’s the much more challenging problem of reaching a truly representative population. In this election, would only Louisville residents be included (not visitors, for example, or students living in Louisville but registered out of state)? And would only legally eligible voters have a say? If so, then we would bar a great number of people who have had their votes revoked by a racist justice system. When would the voting occur and where? Would you need an ID (like you do for all Kentucky elections)? If so, even more of the city’s residents would be excluded. Add to this the historically low turnout among the working poor and the possibility for a sophisticated promotional- and awareness-building apparatus organized by the wealthy neighborhood that houses the statue, and the idea of a simple and fair vote becomes untenable. Still, I would insist that the ultimate goal of any statue review would be to produce, as best as possible, a democratic public sphere, and then to do what is deemed right in this court of public opinion. In order to achieve this we might pose our question to “experts” in a public forum so that they can help frame and respond to the claims and demands of private citizens. This, generally, is what Louisville did. But here the waters are even muddier. Who are these experts? Monument conservators? Civil War and Jim Crow historians? Louisville historians? Art historians? Historians of race and representation? And then once we have our experts, do they work on behalf of the city or the public? And in either case, what part of the question will they answer for us? They could tell us all about Castleman, as I have done. They might measure his fitness for a monument. But that doesn’t tell us if “we” would want such a monument today. Still, I’m sympathetic to this position too, which is why I’ve spent so much time describing Castleman’s life and reception. Many of the monument’s supporters came to our meetings armed with

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facts about Castleman’s life. Many of the statue’s detractors did too, and both kinds of arguments need reasoned, public interpretation and analysis. There’s yet another addressee who might be best equipped to answer our question (“would we, today, put up a statue to this person?”): those who claim that the statue’s existence serves to elaborate or articulate inequity and oppression. Avery Kolers, a social and political philosopher who happens to live in Louisville, has argued for a form of radical solidarity such that, when an issue of oppression or inequality arises, decisions about the course of action are deferred to the group claiming oppression or inequality. Let’s suppose, he argues: You reside in a neighborhood in which there is a monument to some minor Confederate figure. Local African American activists demand that the statue be removed … You might wonder whether it matters all that much; he was after all a minor figure and was rehabilitated into a philanthropist of sorts after the war. And the statue is quite lovely … I submit … that there is a single right answer: the statue must go. Not because in some objective or eternal sense there is a rule that we should not honor people of dubious moral character or political leanings, but because there are victims of white supremacy who plausibly see in it a celebration of their oppression, and until they are satisfied that their society does not celebrate their oppression, their demands are compelling.26

In Kolers’ account, solidarity is an act of deference.27 The goal is not to reach a desired outcome—to solve a problem or find the “right” answer. Rather, solidarity means deferring to those claiming injustice and acting how they act.28 If we adopt Kolers’ definition of solidarity, our question is undone by its very asking. The fact that there are African Americans claiming the statue enforces inequality compels all of us to make this claim as well. There is no need for a debate about the moral character of Castleman, no weighing of his good deeds and bad, and no need for experts to parse the historical record to help determine what the statue honors and if those honors still have merit. Instead, this ethical position demands that, until a time comes that there is no inequality, claims of inequality must always be met with solidarity, not argumentation. I read Kolers’ article in earnest as we completed our work on the Monuments Commission, and I found his argument to be persuasive.29 I’m not a moral philosopher, and have no rhetorical or discursive grounds to debate him on the question of solidarity, though I will say that his thinking informed my own, but ultimately did not shape it. The text is nevertheless required reading for anyone involved in the monuments debate. In application to my work on the commission, it was not possible to divide the audience into “victims of inequality” and “oppressors.” First, because not everyone claiming inequality wanted to remove the statue—some wanted to move it, some to reinscribe it, others to pose counter-monuments or enact other forms of intervention. To which victim might I owe my solidarity? Second, what if those claiming inequality

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don’t have all the facts? If, for example, some Louisvillians want to remove the statue because Castleman segregated the parks, shouldn’t we first try to establish if, indeed, Castleman helped segregate the parks? Finally, the act of silencing all voices opposed to those claiming inequality seemed to me a jarringly anti-democratic position. As I’ve stated thus far, it is my belief that the goal of these commissions is to produce a democratic public sphere—to create an accessible space for informed, rational debate in order to shape public opinion and, in turn, our shared institutions. Jürgen Habermas set the terms for such a public sphere in his analysis of the emergent modern bourgeoisie: “The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; [such private people] … claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules of governing relations.”30 This is precisely what Castleman’s supporters did when they installed the monument—those private citizens came together, made their arguments through the paper of record, garnered public support, and shaped our shared public space. And this is precisely the process by which the monument should be reevaluated today. Unfortunately, the great difficulty with Habermas’ theory is that it too is undemocratic. As he acknowledges, only the wealthy and educated could participate in this public sphere—they were the ones with the knowledge and leisure necessary to produce and employ a shared critical reason, and thus Habermas separates out the “common man” from his bourgeois public. Nevertheless, our faith in the possibility of a truly democratic public sphere (even if the world has never actually seen such a thing) drives most of these monument commissions and their endless town hall meetings, public hearings, and expert testimony. Thus if this is, necessarily, the goal of our commission, what do we do about the problem of inequality? How can we reconcile the impossible task of equitably and democratically weighing the merits of a monument to a man who fought, unrepentantly, for the cause of slavery? Let’s return to our experts again, and to another question for our debate: Can our experts provide anything other than analysis and interpretation of the words and deeds of a man born into wealth, pardoned by a president, and adored by the paper of record that provides much of the information we have about him today? That is, can they help balance the unequal discursive space in which we find ourselves and, in turn, help us to produce a democratic public sphere? I believe that they can, but only if we count as expertise the lived experience of oppression. We are by now familiar with the notion that proximity to trauma and oppression affords a particular kind of knowledge. We can trace this idea to W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Double Consciousness,” and the related concept of “Second Sight,” which he says is gifted to Black subjects and affords them the ability to view power and oppression from two vantages.31 By including experiential knowledge as a form of expertise our discursive field becomes more inclusive. This is of course not to suggest that those claiming injustice do so without recourse to historical facts and context—they did at every meeting! But rather, that by including and counting as fact information about the experience of oppression provided by those claiming inequality in the shadow of these monuments, we can begin to balance the terms of a debate that, so far, has been stacked against them. And we can also do so without

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silencing or disqualifying voices of opposition, not because of any fealty to a “both sides” equivocation, but because a forceful and lasting solution to debates about public space, and ultimately the power to control public space, must come from democratic agonism and the resulting reconfiguration of public opinion.

Part Three: What Happened in Louisville The Public Art and Monuments Committee held seven meetings. Each meeting was advertised broadly, and meeting locations were varied throughout the city in order to reach as diverse an audience as possible. Multiple meetings were held in public libraries, one on the campus of the University of Louisville, another at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. In every case, the format was the same. The meetings began with public comments, which took the form of short presentations by any member of the public interested to speak. We also solicited thousands of online and email comments. After the public comments session our committee would continue our discussion from the previous meeting—mostly, we discussed what monuments are, who should be depicted, how the mayor should decide what stays and what goes, etc. A great deal of attention was paid to the question of “context.” If the mayor found that a statue was problematic, could he address this with a change to a plaque or the addition of some kind of contextual material? To some, the idea that problematic monuments can only be removed was too drastic. To others, the idea that we might justify keeping a racist statue by simply adding a plaque was abhorrent. In the end, we decided that only an extreme contextual shift could fix a problematic monument and only in very rare circumstances. The committee’s recommendations to the mayor included four short sections.32 First, we acknowledged that our recommendations are general guidelines that pertain to all monuments. However, we insisted that the mayor come to a decision quickly about the Castleman statue, which was by now the target of repeated vandalism and much public frustration (Figure 8.2). Second, we provided a set of principles that governed our thinking and should govern the mayor’s decision too. They are: 1) Monuments are not history. 2) Our monument landscape reflects the history of monument making, not necessarily the full history of Louisville. This must be rectified. 3) Our monuments must reflect the demographics and composition of our city as a whole. 4) Monuments must be accessible. 5) History is complex. Some historical figures and events provoke pride. Others shame. Public interpretations of history should not shy away from the latter in favor of the former. 6) The criteria for removing a monument, as well as the criteria for installing a new monument, must be rigorous.

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Figure 8.2  Hinton Perry, John Breckinridge Castleman Statue, Louisville, Kentucky, 1913, vandalized in 2018. Photograph by author.

These principles were elaborated in the document to the mayor. The third section of our report provided evaluative criteria for existing monuments. It included the following questions: 1) Is the principle legacy of the subject depicted in the monument fundamentally at odds with current community values? 2) Is the subject a potential rallying point for racist or bigoted groups? 3) Does the object celebrate a part of history that a majority of Louisvillians believe is fundamental to who we are and what we value? 4) Is the monument physically accessible to all Louisvillians and visitors? Does it make a nuanced, complex history accessible to its publics? As before, the letter to the mayor elaborated a bit on these points. Finally, the document included a note about the construction of new monuments, which should aim to rectify the lack of diversity in the city’s monument landscape, should “educate our residents and our visitors in an honorable but honest way,” and should, whenever possible, seek to “conserve historic sites rather than celebrate” historic figures. “This is because historic sites are activated through interpretation and

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reinterpretation. They demand active, engaged historical analysis rather than passive commemoration.” After our commission gave the mayor our criteria for evaluation, he deliberated and decided to remove two monuments, including the monument to Castleman.33 I believe he was right to do so. The Castleman statue fails a number of our evaluative criteria, in particular criterion One. His primary legacy—the primary legacy of anyone who voluntarily took up arms against the Union and the values of freedom and equality—will always be treason, no matter how many tennis courts he made for Black residents. Any attempt to find the good in Confederate soldiers—to find “very fine people on both sides,” as it were—reinscribes the same Reconstruction-era moral equivalence that precipitated Jim Crow. Castleman was only able to serve as parks commission president because he was pardoned by an administration more worried about appeasing wealthy white landowners than freed Black Americans. We should be horrified that someone who volunteered to fight against the Union in favor of slavery was able to keep his wealth and social stature after defeat, not delighted to learn that he was nice to Black Louisvillians in his old age. But the decision was not mine to make. Instead, our role as citizen-experts was to produce a document that was also, in its production, an opening for argumentation— for town hall meetings, opinion articles, letter writing campaigns, online surveys and petitions. I suspect, but do not know, that these weighed more heavily on the mayor than did our short set of guidelines. And if this is true, so much the better—what more can we ask from our experts?

Notes 1

2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

David Mattingly, “Mayor Fischer Orders Review of Public Art in Search of Pieces Promoting Bigotry, Racism,” Wave 3 News, August 14, 2017, accessed August 13, 2019, https://www.wave3.com/story/36134155/mayor-fischer-orders-review-ofpublic-art-in-search-of-pieces-promoting-bigotry-racism/. My thinking in this role and, in turn, on this paper and others, is indebted to my fellow Louisville Public Art and Monuments Advisory Committee members: Tricia Burke, Carolle Jones Clay, Dewey M. Clayton, Ashley Haynes, Thomas Owen, and Cathy Shannon, and, in particular, to Sarah Lindgren, Louisville’s Public Art administrator, who worked tirelessly to facilitate our meetings and public dialogues. John Breckinridge Castleman, Active Service (London: Forgotten Books, 2015 [reprint of original edition, 1917]), 15–17. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 56 Ibid., 73. “The Northwest Conspiracy,” Active Service, 129–31; and “In Exile with Jacob Thompson—Experiences Abroad,” Active Service, 196–200. “Gen. Castleman Is Laid to Rest,” Courier Journal. Louisville, KY, May 27, 1918, front page. “Was Father of Park System,” Courier-Journal, May 24, 1918, 2.

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10 Ibid., 2. 11 “Meeting as to the Castleman Statue.” Courier-Journal, April 7, 1910, 4. 12 This is a particularly illustrative example of the nineteenth-century bourgeois public sphere as described by Jürgen Habermas, especially given the role of the newspaper as a mouthpiece for the opinions of private citizens. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). I will expand on Habermas’ notion, and its relationship to the debates, at the end of this chapter. 13 “Want Models Submitted for Castleman Statue,” Courier-Journal, February 10, 1911, 6. 14 “Accept Model of State of Gen. Castleman,” Courier-Journal, November 26, 1911, 7. 15 “Castleman Statue to be in Cherokee Park,” Courier-Journal, December 18, 1912. 16 “Countrymen Pay Tribute to Gen. John B. Castleman at Unveiling of His Statue Near Cherokee Park,” Courier-Journal, November 9, 1913, B12. 17 “The Castleman Statue,” Courier-Journal, April 9, 1910, 6. 18 “Officer Is Not saluted,” Courier-Journal, October 25, 1917, 1. 19 The article notes that it is the policy of the US army that “a negro that is an officer is no longer to be regarded as a negro, but as an officer” and Castleman is resolved on this point: “We salute the rank, not the individual.” Ibid. 20 “Protest to Tennis Courts for Negros of No Avail,” Courier-Journal, September 16, 1914, 7. 21 Ibid. 22 Owen made this remark in a letter to the commission. 23 In his farewell address as Parks president he made this point clear, arguing for separate but equal facilities. “President J. B. Castleman Praises Efficiency of Park Board Employees,” Courier-Journal, November 9, 1916, 5. 24 Chris Reitz, “A Questionnaire on Monuments,” October 165 (Summer 2018): 139–41. 25 Alois Riegl, Der Moderne Denkmalkultus: Sein Wesen und seine Entstehung (Wien: W. Braumüller, 1903). 26 Avery Kolers, “The Moral Duty of Solidarity,” Civil American 3, article 4, April 30, 2018, accessed June 20, 2019, https://www.philosophersinamerica.com/2018/04/30/ the-moral-duty-of-solidarity/. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Thanks to Susan Jarosi for bringing it to my attention. 30 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 27. 31 “The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.” For Du Bois, this “Second Sight” allows Black subjects to see themselves as white people do, but also to see white people as Black people do. Thus, unlike white subjects, who operate with a much more limited single sight, Black subjects are able to see race from multiple perspectives. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co: 1903), 3. 32 The entire document is available to the public at: https://louisvilleky.gov/sites/default/ files/public_art/pamac_final_report.pdf. All citations come from this document. 33 As I write this, the statue remains in place. Its removal is held up by various legal and procedural hurdles.

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Addressing Monumental Controversies in New York City Post Charlottesville By Harriet F. Senie

Introduction I have long been a public art historian but in the wake of Charlottesville I became a public public art historian, that is to say someone who served on a number of public commissions and selection panels having to do with controversial works and subjects. This chapter is based specifically on my experience as a member of The New York City Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, which was convened in 2017 by Mayor Bill de Blasio. Our discussions regarding general applicable principles as well as recommendations for specific controversial works were often charged but always interesting and valuable, even if our advice was ultimately ignored or subsumed by political agendas.

Charlottesville Changed Everything The riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017, took place in Emancipation Park near a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. In the face-off between white nationalists and counter-protesters (church members, civil rights activists, other community sectors, and individuals), a young paralegal woman was killed and nineteen others were injured. Subsequently, there was a widespread call to remove Confederate statues in public places, sparked by the fact that the Lee statue (begun by Henry Merwin Shrady and finished by Leo Lentelli; installed in 1924) was at the center of the deadly violence. Initially draped in black, the statue was removed a year after the riots. As communities across the country reconsidered their Confederate monuments, distinctions were made between those statues that were erected immediately following the Civil War honoring the soldiers who fought and those works commissioned decades later bolstering Jim Crow laws that legalized racial segregation. The reckoning with Confederate memorials soon spread to other works that prompted controversy, and suddenly scholars who had been writing about public art and memorials in relative obscurity for quite some time were invited to serve on local

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commissions and memorial selection panels. Just a scant decade earlier in 2008, Cher Krause Knight and I co-founded the international organization Public Art Dialogue hosting a small group of public art enthusiasts at the College Art Association’s annual meeting that convened that year in Dallas. Although few in number, participants were enthusiastic as there was no existing venue for the varied professionals involved with public art to gather and discuss critical issues in the field. Up until then, all too often the work of both academic art historians and artists working in this arena had been considered marginalized, deemed somehow not as significant as gallery and museum art or the writing about it. The first issue of the organization’s journal Public Art Dialogue, co-edited by Knight and myself, appeared in spring 2011 and has been published twice a year since then. In the aftermath of Charlottesville, we both became public public art historians in our respective cities (Boston and New York) and are now planning a publication that identifies critical issues in commissioning memorials exemplified by case studies to highlight the inherent challenges we have experienced and suggest best practices going forward.

The Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers Chaired by then Commissioner of Cultural Affairs, Tom Finkelpearl, and President of The Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, the eighteen-member commission was created with the mandate: To advise the Mayor on issues relating to public art, monuments, and historic markers on City-owned property. Specifically, the Commission’s charge is to develop non-binding recommendations on how the City should address Cityowned monuments and markers on City property; particularly those that are subject to sustained negative public reaction or may be viewed as inconsistent with the values of New York City, by which we mean a just city that prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion.1

The Commission met three times during the Fall of 2017 and began by creating a set of principles that could be applied to the city’s public art in general and specifically to the statues that were currently controversial: the marker for Marshal Philippe Pétain (Lower Broadway), the Dr. J. Marion Sims Monument (Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street), the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt (in front of the American Museum of Natural History), and the Christopher Columbus Monument (Columbus Circle). The guiding principles we developed consisted of:

Reckoning with power to represent history in public (recognizing that the ability to represent histories in public is powerful; reckoning with inequity and injustice while looking to a just future);

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Historical understanding (respect for and commitment to in-depth and nuanced histories, acknowledging multiple perspectives, including histories that previously have not been privileged);



Inclusion (creating conditions for all New Yorkers to feel welcome in New York City’s public spaces and to have a voice in the public processes by which monuments and markers are included in such spaces);



Complexity (acknowledging layered and evolving narratives represented in New York City’s public spaces, with preference for additive, relational, and intersectional approaches over subtractive ones. Monuments and markers have multiple meanings that are difficult to unravel, and it is often impossible to agree on a single meaning);



Justice (recognizing the erasure embedded in the City’s collection of monuments and markers; addressing histories of dispossession, enslavement, and discrimination not adequately represented in the current public landscape; and actualizing equity).

Excellent principles, all, but they were not always or consistently applied; sufficient background information to enable historical understanding was most seriously lacking in our conversations. Idealistic in nature, the overriding theme is clearly one of social justice, suggesting that the predominant purpose of memorials is and should be to acknowledge—and implicitly correct—past mistakes by changing the public art landscape. This assumption warrants closer scrutiny; it implies a quota approach, requiring a certain percentage of works to, say, women or Blacks, going forward to set things right, which has inherent ideological and administrative problems.2 In any event, these principles were then applied—more or less consistently—to the four works noted above. Possible votes were for removal, remain in situ, or further study. Some decisions seemed relatively straight forward, others not so much.

Marshal Philippe Pétain Our deliberations about the plaque honoring Marshal Philippe Pétain (1856–1951) along the so-called Canyon of Heroes on lower Broadway were fairly easy to resolve. Pétain’s marker was part of a larger group, a historical record of the ticker-tape parades that had taken place over time, and it did not seem appropriate to remove a part of the whole. The Commission also discussed the distinction between factual versus honorific, these markers being considered in the former category. Pétain was included for his service in the First World War, in particular his heroism at the Battle of Verdun. Current objections to the marker were based on atrocities with which he was associated as chief of state of the French government at Vichy that cooperated with the Nazis during the Second World War. In addition, it was felt that the “Canyon of Heroes” as the street is commonly known was part of the problem as it implied an honorific status that, from today’s perspective,

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might seem questionable. At the time of this writing, plans are underway to replace signs that include that designation with just the street name, Broadway. There are also ongoing discussions about what contextual information should be supplied online to augment each plaque, who should provide it, and how best to access it.3

Dr. J. Marion Sims The statue honoring Dr. J. Marion Sims (1813–83) by Ferdinand Freiherr von Miller II presented a very different problem. It was a tribute to the so-called father of gynecology, who established the first woman’s hospital in the United States and was one of the most celebrated American physicians of his time. The two circular engravings on the base, one on each side of the figure, read: “SURGEON AND PHILANTHROPIST, FOUNDER OF THE WOMAN’S HOSPITAL STATE OF NEW YORK. HIS BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENT CARRIED THE FAME OF AMERICAN SURGERY THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE WORLD” and “IN RECOGNITION OF HIS SERVICES IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE AND MANKIND AWARDED HIGHEST HONORS BY HIS COUNTRYMEN AND DECORATIONS FROM THE GOVERNMENTS OF BELGIUM, FRANCE, ITALY AND PORTUGAL.” The statue, dedicated in Bryant Park in 1894 was moved to storage when the park underwent construction, and in 1934 was reinstalled on Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street adjacent to Central Park and across the street from the New York Academy of Medicine. Here it became an object of controversy in the East Harlem community. At issue was Dr. Sims’ experimental surgery performed between 1845 and 1849 on enslaved women without anesthetic in his quest for a cure for vesicovaginal fistula, an excruciatingly painful condition that afflicted many nineteenth-century women after childbirth.4 The most influential account of his work from this perspective is Harriet A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (2007), which contextualizes Sims’ practice within a larger history.5 After the publication of Washington’s book East Harlem Preservation, a volunteer advocacy association founded two years earlier, began advocating for the statue’s removal. Even before the Commission had its first meeting, Mayor de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, echoed her objections on Twitter.6 The popular press fanned the controversy by emphasizing Sims’ highly questionable practice.7 Although Sims experimented only on enslaved Black women, the history may actually be more nuanced than had been widely publicized.8 Anesthetic was not in wide use at the time; in fact, during the Civil War men who required amputations were given only leather straps to clamp between their teeth.9 Then, too, the condition for which Dr. Sims was trying to find a cure was extremely painful, and it has been suggested that many women would have done anything to find some relief. The basics of the cure he did eventually find are still in use today.10 The Commission Report stated that “research from a number of scholars of social and medical history … situates Sims’ practices in the context of dehumanizing and racialized medical norms of the time, notably the experimentation on Black Americans by white doctors from colonial times through the present.”11

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The Commission voted to remove the statue for several reasons. We were very mindful of the ongoing voiced, written, and staged protests by the local community. Then, too, the statue had already been moved once, and the New York Academy of Medicine across the street did not want it there. Arrangements were made to relocate it to Green-Wood Cemetery where Sims was buried. According to Richard Moylan, president of Green-Wood, “We [accepted the statue] with the intent to make sure his whole story be told” and the hope that it would become “a visual focal point that will bring attention to a factual display … to document Sims’ story, including his shameful experimentation on enslaved women in the South.”12 As it turned out, the statue was too large to fit on or near his grave and so was put in storage, where, as of this writing, it remains and where it may stay because of local protests. Brooklyn residents of Sunset Park, Kensington, South Slope, and Windsor Terrace circulated a petition that described the statue as “honoring white supremacy.”13 In any event, before it could be reinstalled it would have to be repaired since someone had tried unsuccessfully to cut off its head. Although the Commission voted to remove the statue of Dr. Sims, we decided to keep its substantial base at the site with an added explanation in order not to erase the history of what had been there.14 There were some individuals, however, for whom removal was not enough. Judith A. Salerno, then president of the New York Academy of Medicine, felt that “relocating to another place still recognizes the work of J. Marion Sims without acknowledging his egregious misuse of power in conducting surgical experiments on enslaved black women.”15 Others expressed the opinion that the statue should be buried at Green-Wood rather than displayed. Some commission members suggested that the known names of the enslaved women who made Dr. Sims’ discovery possible—Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha—be recognized. Others recommended partnering “with an appropriate organization to program in-depth public dialogues and symposia on the history of non-consensual medical experimentation on people of color, particularly women, based in part on the legacy of J. Marion Sims.”16 Before conducting a competition for a new work, Kendal Henry, director of the city’s Percent for Art Program, hosted a series of meetings to discuss community ideas about a replacement for the Sims statue, and the Department of Cultural Affairs’ posted an online survey inviting those living in surrounding zip codes to offer their opinions. They also canvased the neighborhood for public input. The designs of the competition finalists—Vinnie Bagwell, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, and Kehinde Wiley—were displayed at a public meeting at The Museum of the City of New York on Saturday, October 5, 2019, which I attended. Bagwell, who describes herself as an “untutored artist,” was the only artist who presented her work in person; the others sent a representative, and that made a difference. Marina Ortiz, founder of East Harlem Preservation, complained afterwards: “The whole point of the event was for the artists themselves to engage with the community, and the only artist that was present was Vinnie Bagwell.”17 The Percent for Art selection panel met in private after the public presentation and discussion and chose Simone Leigh by a 4–3 vote. The intense angry outbreak that followed their announcement was one of the most toxic I have ever witnessed.18 To put a stop to the hostilities, Tom Finkelpearl

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stepped in and announced that the committee’s recommendations were not final and discussions would continue at his offices. Subsequently, Leigh, withdrew and the community got their wish: Bagwell. This problematic outcome raised several critical issues, among them how and in what ways should community members be involved? Given the amount of input the community had up to this point, their sense of betrayal seemed understandable to me. It was painfully apparent that their role in the selection process had not been made clear. It also brought into question the role of the official selection committee; when I served on such bodies in the past, my understanding was that their recommendation was binding, not advisory. The question remains: Who should determine the choice of a work of public art? And, what is the relevance of artistic merit as defined by professionals in the field—or what I have come to think of, “What’s ART got to do with it?” This, it turned out, became a serious issue with the Theodore Roosevelt equestrian statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).

Theodore Roosevelt By way of total transparency, I became particularly involved with this work initially because I recognized its obvious artistic merit but knew very little about it. Since the Commission had been given no background information, I did some basic research and shared my findings with the group. Subsequently, the AMNH hired me as the art history consultant for an exhibition addressing the controversy (discussed below).19 The equestrian statue of Roosevelt flanked by a Native American and an African by James Earle Fraser was part of the larger design program determined by the architect, John Russell Pope, who won the 1925 competition. Fraser, who had been Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ chief assistant for many years and a very successful sculptor in his own right, was one of the most popular public sculptors during the early decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, he has remained a relatively unknown figure in most circles and certainly among the general public.20 The composition of the central figure on horseback is based on the well-known Renaissance statue of the Venetian condottiero, Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrochio, while the horse followed the general proportions of Roosevelt’s Man of War. It was not, however, the equestrian statue per se that prompted the subsequent controversy; rather, it was the fact that he was depicted on horseback while the flanking figures at his side were on foot, suggesting a distinct hierarchy. Their visual appearance, however, is in no way abject, nor was that Fraser’s intent. According to Cecile Ganteaume, associate curator, National Museum of the American Indian, Fraser liked to work from photographs of Native American peoples, creating a composite rather than a representative of a specific tribe. For the Roosevelt memorial, “The type he wanted to create was that of the Noble Savage and Vanishing Indian, and the overwhelming majority of his viewers in 1936 would likely have regarded the sculpture as representing just that … With the frontier closed, the country was moving on. Fraser’s Native American is there to represent a major and

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defining chapter in the country’s past.” More generally, Thayer Tolles and Marcia F. Vilcek, curator of American Painting and Sculpture at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, observed: “Sculptors such as Cyrus Dallin, James Earle Fraser, and Hermon Atkins MacNeil created sensitive representations of Native Americans as noble savages diminished by white expansionist policies, in effect protesting their unjust treatment. Though dispossessed, they are presented as dignified, whether in poses of defiance or defeat.”21 Pope described the African figure as “primitive,” and there is both a drawing and a bronze that appear to reflect this description, but this image was refined in the final version. In all likelihood, the African figure, like the Native American, is a composite with some features specific to certain tribes or regions. According to James Green (then Fellow, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, Metropolitan Museum of Art; subsequently Curator of African Art, Yale Gallery of Art), scarification in general is associated with some kind of status and definitely is a sign of adulthood, an indicator that the figure has completed an initiation. There is, however, a strange disjuncture between the head, which is decidedly African, and the body, which suggests classical or Renaissance sculpture. Indeed, the body bears a striking resemblance to the so called Kritios Boy, an iconic example of a Greek male nude, generally considered a transitional figure between the Archaic and Early Classical style. Although Fraser was very familiar with Native Americans, that was not the case with Africans. Using a Greek model would have been natural for someone who had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and could be considered a form of idealization appropriate to an allegorical figure. Shortly before the unveiling of the memorial, Fraser wrote: “The two figures at his side are guides symbolizing the continents of Africa and America, and if you choose may stand for Roosevelt’s friendliness to all races.”22 Indeed, the figures stand in front of reliefs on the building’s parapet depicting animals native to their respective continents. Allegorical representations of continents were common in sculptural practice of the day, as were allegorical works with characteristics of actual figures. Prior to the Roosevelt commission Fraser had worked on the completion of Saint-Gaudens’ General Sherman monument located at Fifth Avenue at the southeast entrance to Central Park, a work that consisted of a man on horseback led by an allegorical figure, in this case a female representing victory. This work would certainly have been on his mind when he designed the Roosevelt statue. Given the evidence of Fraser’s own words and contemporary sculptural practice, the depiction of the standing figures can best be understood as both allegorical representatives of continents and Roosevelt’s gun bearers and/or guides. As Fraser also emphasized, “Roosevelt … is shown, not as the president of the United States, but as the naturalist, who has made a notable collection of animal specimens from Africa and America.”23 Darrin Lunde observed that Roosevelt was an intrepid museum naturalist [from a very young age] … He studied animals by shooting them, stuffing them and preserving them in natural-history museums … [He also lived at a time when these museums] commissioned scientists to explore and document uncharted terrain, collecting specimens for both study and

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exhibit … Part scientist, part explorer, they collected animals by the thousand and for such a naturalist, collect meant kill and preserve, a fact easily forgotten today.24

Now serious concerns about extinction and preservation of the environment challenge the hunting aspect of “museum naturalists.” Natural history museum collections, however, are important as documents of biodiversity as well as the history of the natural world. Somewhere a balance is necessary. The Commission’s deliberation involved heated discussion about eugenics in terms of both Roosevelt’s and the Museum’s ideology. Given the heinous expression of racist eugenics during the Second World War, this concept is now appropriately regarded with complete revulsion and dismissal. During the early decades of the twentieth century, however, a focus on preserving the best in the human race (a loaded distinction to be sure), eugenics was closely linked with conservation and its focus on the natural world. The Progressive movement saw them as “contemporary social and political programs whose ideologies were not only compatible, but for those who adhered to them, mutually reinforcing.”25 This context is pertinent, when considering the memorial today, and is emblematic of the critical question of how (much) past ideologies should be judged by present beliefs in determining the fate of public art. Nuanced complicated historical issues are rarely considered by protesters today. The demonstrations were based on the perceived racial hierarchies suggested by the statue and Roosevelt’s imperialist policies. Many were organized by Decolonize This Place, a protest group dedicated to challenging “the white supremacy that continues to characterize the economies and institutions of art.”26 Those in favor of keeping the statue in place (myself among them) felt that the only way to ensure that outcome was to vote for further study, which is what was finally decided. Subsequently, Mayor Bill de Blasio determined that the work should stay, and the Museum began planning for an exhibition that would present the controversy over the statue from various perspectives. Consisting largely of text and headshots with quotes, the exhibition included, among other things, a timeline for Roosevelt, various interpretations of the flanking figures, and different opinions on what should happen to the statue. There was also an online site for audience comments, but since it was created after there had been an article in the New York Times, it is possible that some or many of the respondents may not have seen the exhibition. That said, roughly half supported maintaining the status quo, about 25 percent advocated for removal, and an additional 25 percent supported some sort of additional intervention, including moving the statue to another location or removing the standing figures. Although such an exhibition presents an admirable public forum to consider such controversies and the AMNH is to be commended for mounting it, I was left with some concerns regarding the Museum’s role. Art historian Michele Bogart agreed with my interpretation, but criticized the AMNH for foregrounding opinions from the general public and professionals who viewed the memorial only in terms of racism.27 Indeed, the wall text stated that the statue portrays a “racist hierarchy” that the Museum “has long found disturbing,” although this hadn’t prompted them to research it further.

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Christopher Columbus Debates surrounding the Columbus statue by Gaetano Russo dedicated on October 12, 1892, at Columbus Circle, were, if anything, more passionate than those surrounding the Roosevelt, but then we were dealing with a national creation myth. America had originally been called Columbia, and by the end of the nineteenth century Columbus had been a national icon for nearly a hundred years. His perceived reputation was linked in part to the semi-fictional biography by Washington Irving, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828) and the Scottish historian William Robertson’s History of America (1777), which presented Columbus “as a man stifled by the rigid ways of the Old World and yearning to set his own course.”28 By the 1890s, there were many cities and cultural institutions named for him. Then, too, the time of the commission coincided with the City Beautiful Movement when such public works were very much in vogue. In addition, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage was approaching, prompting the Chicago World’s Fair (known as the World’s Columbian Exposition), among many other celebrations. The statue at Columbus Circle was commissioned after eleven Sicilians were lynched in New Orleans in 1891 after being found innocent of a crime. At the time, there was widespread cultural prejudice against Italians who were not considered “white.” In a letter to his sister, future president Theodore Roosevelt referred to them as “dagos” and considered the lynching “rather a good thing.”29 The Columbus statue was intended be a tribute to Italian Americanness, a symbol of their being acceptable and accepted. At the public hearings convened by the Mayoral Commission in conjunction with their deliberations, many individuals spoke passionately of the singular significance of Columbus to Italian Americans.30 Many took an attack on Columbus personally; quite a few had grown up with images of Christ, President John F. Kennedy, and Columbus in their home. A letter to the Commission from the Confederation of Columbian Lawyer Associations, composed of 1500 lawyers, judges, and elected officials of principally Italian American ancestry, stated that: “Columbus has become the embodiment of the Italian-American experience and the assimilation and successes of generations of Italians who emigrated from Italy to a land, also unknown to them, eventually helping to build and defend the shores of our country.” It concluded with their wish “to express the importance of his symbolism to an ethnic group that has done nothing less than help make this city, state and country great.”31 More recently, however, a different view of Columbus has attracted equally passionate myth debunkers. As political scientist Edward Burmila and others have noted, Columbus’ rise to fame after the American Revolution was occasioned by the need to find heroes who had no connection with Britain, although it was known that others had sighted the continent before Columbus. In present day, according to Burmila, “Columbus was a surrogate, this time for an America making a clumsy and overdue effort to grapple with a shameful part of history.”32 It is now acknowledged by many historians that the United States was founded on the sanctioned genocide of Native American nations in the land quest by what has been called settler colonialism.33 In this context, Columbus is discussed in terms of heinous crimes committed against

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Indigenous people and seen as launching the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Indeed, many communities have replaced the celebration of Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The Commission Report noted: For many marginalized peoples, from Indigenous peoples cross the Americas including Lenape and Algonquian-language peoples whose land New York City sits on, to Black Americans, to those of Taino heritage from the Caribbean, and other colonized peoples, Columbus represents a violent past. It is understood that the history of discrimination, dispossession and enslavement that touches many people in this country resonates in the long, continuing fight for recognition as “equal” and “American”—or “equal” and Indigenous—that affects all marginalized groups.34

In a split vote, we decided to leave the statue where it was because there were passionate stakeholders on both sides, and it was deemed pragmatically impossible to remove all references to Columbus in Manhattan—Columbus Avenue, Columbia University, etc. A proviso was added that the statue should be contextualized in some way and that “substantial additive measures should be undertaken to continue the public discourse.”35 Among the recommendations were “the addition of new temporary artworks, permanent monuments, and robust public dialogue that more fully tells our history, rooted in a nuanced recognition of the pride, trauma, marginalization, and dispossession the monument represents.”36 It remains to be decided what kind of contextualization should be displayed at the Columbus statue, and there are ongoing discussions with members of the Indigenous community as to what kind of monument they would find appropriate and what form it might take.

Looking Ahead: Commission Recommendations The Commission made a number of comprehensive recommendations to the City going forward: 1. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of its current collection of public art, monuments, and markers in order to gain an understanding of what and who are represented and left out; and consider making such an assessment publicly accessible; 2. Commission new permanent monuments and works about history to begin a proactive, additive process that rebalances and/or creates a more representative public collection; 3. Commission new temporary artworks about historical moments to add more perspectives and to foster public dialogue in public space; 4. Establish a mechanism for community-generated monuments and markers to give agency to neighborhoods to decide what and whom to celebrate in their public spaces;

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5. Invest in educational initiatives through partnerships between the Department of Education, the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Public Design Commission, and relevant cultural organizations to integrate complex and nuanced histories into curricula using monuments and markers; 6. Host or co-host city-sponsored historical discussions or public programs to address issues raised by controversial art, monuments, or markers; for example, a symposium on women’s health at the New York Academy of Medicine, stemming from objections to Dr. J. Marion Sims monument; 7. Use digital content and new technologies to make the City’s collection of art, monuments, and markers more accessible to the public, potentially through VR/ AR and interactive artworks; 8. Create equity funds for historically underrepresented communities, offering tangible community investments to address historical exclusions, represented by many controversial monuments and artworks over the long term; 9. Establish an interagency task force on monuments to deal with this issue moving forward, including representatives of relevant City agencies including, but not limited to, the Department of Cultural Affairs, Parks Department, Landmarks Preservation Commission, Public Design Commission, and Department of Transportation, and one representative from each borough. The Commissioner of Cultural Affairs may serve as a permanent member in an advisory capacity to fulfill the recommendations of this Commission, ensuring expeditious treatment and appropriate resolution. These are all worth considering in general and specifically within the context of the particulars of any controversy and the community in which it occurs. It remains to be seen how many of these will be instituted in New York and what form they will take.

Ongoing Questions and Concerns One of the most vexing ongoing issues pertinent to nearly all controversies is how to determine an appropriate moral compass by which to judge individuals who lived in the past. For example, Adam Serwer in his argument for removing the Sims statue queries: Is it appropriate that a society that no longer seeks to honor slavery or white supremacy, or deceives itself about the Southern cause, ceases to honor the men who lead the fight for it? In Sim’s case, his defenders may argue that his contributions to medical science outweigh his misdeeds. But it is precisely his use of enslaved Black subjects for surgical experiments that made those contributions possible; it is not feasible to separate them, any more than it is possible to separate the physical bravery of Confederate soldiers from the cause to which they gave their lives.37

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These complex issues cannot be properly addressed without information about the relevant historical context (including pertinent art issues). Unfortunately, this was not provided to the Commission. Today, in an attempt to right the wrongs of the past, it is easy to focus on symbolic statues but this does not address the serious underlying problems that prompted the controversies; you can tear down all the Confederate memorials there are (and I am not suggesting we do), and we will not have eradicated racial prejudice. Rather, we may have removed some opportunities to discuss today’s relevant issues and (re)consider the past in the present. Another thing that affects nearly all controversies in a negative way is the typically inflammatory role of the press. News is driven by controversy—an either/ or construction of events. There is no room for subtleties in daily reportage, especially online. It is critical to consider ways to counteract this. It is also crucial to determine the most effective ways for gathering broadly based public opinion. Many individuals do not know about public hearings or online surveys, and these are often framed in ways to elicit a certain response without presenting the nuances of the case. If we want effective public dialogue that strives for understanding rather than winning or losing, these issues must be addressed. As the saying goes, it’s complicated—and it certainly isn’t easy—but it is essential. Finally, it is important to remember that ideally the best public art can convey our highest civic values and engage people in ways that strengthen them. But in the end, it is the evolving ways that people use the works in our shared spaces that determine their meaning.

Postscript The recent wave of monumental cleansing has prompted a more critical look at an increasing number of statues that are not Confederate memorials. Among them is the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt flanked by a standing Native American and African (discussed above) in front of the Museum of Natural History. On June 22, 2020, the museum announced that it had asked the city to remove the work. Mayor de Blasio granted his approval; Roosevelt’s great-grandson agreed; and the museum’s president, Ellen Futter, announced that the Hall of Biodiversity would be renamed in Roosevelt’s honor for his contribution to conservation. Although there have been years of sporadic prostests, it appears that it was this moment of widespread Black Lives Matter marches in the wake of recent police murders of Black individuals, including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that prompted the museum to act. It’s time to step back and reflect before reacting precipitously. There are no guidelines or parameters being followed in the current rush for removal, although some public art programs provide usable models.38 Julian Baggini has suggested that a clear indicator that a work should be relocated is if the reason for commissioning it coincides with current objections.39 That is the case with Confederate memorials erected during the Jim Crow era, but not the Theodore Roosevelt. He is celebrated here for his work in conservation, but protesters see a racial hierarchy and colonialism. A work of art in a public space is almost always understood literally

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(it looks like, therefore it must mean) and seen in an exclusively presentist frame, with contemporary values obscuring any (art) historical meaning or importance. The protesters raise issues that are pertinent to Roosevelt—but not in the context of this commission. In public spaces there is no room for nuanced interpretations. We have yet to find an effective way to get from an “or” to an “and” thinking, as in Roosevelt accomplished much in certain areas but also held beliefs and took actions that are an anathema to contemporary values. At a time when we are trying to move beyond binary thinking across a range of areas, it is imperative to do so when it comes to controversial monuments if we are going to arrive at a balanced and accurate view of history. One challenge is that in most cases, there are multiple stakeholders (e.g., some Italian Americans are passionate supporters of Columbus). That does not mean that they are right-wing racist conservatives, although that is the case in some instances. On June 25, the Army activated some 400 unarmed members of the National Guard to protect monuments in the nation’s capital in what was labeled a civil service mission.40 And on Sunday June 28, there was a counter-protest to keep the Roosevelt statue in front of the museum organized by conservative groups, spurred via Twitter by David Marcus, the New York correspondent for The Federalist. Many of the 150 were Trump supporters.41 At the time of this writing, it appears, that the AMNH will not keep the statue. If ever there was a missed opportunity this is it; the statue is without question a teachable monument. Gonzalo Casals, Director of Cultural Affairs, has suggested keeping the base and inaugurating a version of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square London, with changing installations that reflect evolving times and values.42 This would be one way to create an opening for real dialogue. Public protests are vital to a democracy, but they don’t typically initiate reasoned discussion. Sometimes, as is the case with the Roosevelt, a work becomes such a lightning rod that to keep it in its present location would only deepen already toxic divisiveness. Then it makes sense to reinstall it in a location where it can be contextualized and reconsidered. In the heat of the moment it is hard to remember that taking down a statue is a symbolic act; it must be accompanied by actual change to make a real difference.

Notes 1

2

Commission members in addition to Darren Walker and Tom Finkelpearl and myself were Richard Alba, Michael Arad, Harry Belafonte, John Calvelli, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Gonzalo Casals, Teresita Fernandez, Amy Freitag, Jon Meacham, Catie Marron, Pepon Osorio, Shahzia Sikander, Audra Simpson, John Kuo Wei Tchen, and Mabel O. Wilson. Their bios are included in Monuments Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, “Report to the City of New York,” January 2018, 33–8; 4. Unless otherwise noted all references pertaining to the commission are taken from this source, hereafter referred to as Commission Report. At a City Council meeting where I suggested that it might mean overlooking some very worthy white men in the future, there was heated vehement protest that we have

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enough white men who have been honored. That may in fact be true but, as in most cases, a less exclusive policy makes more sense—something like an affirmative actionlike approach, weighted heavily in favor of those individuals from under-represented groups. 3 My thanks to Kendal Henry, director of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program, for providing information on the status of each of the works at the time of this writing. 4 This condition, as well as Sims and his experiments, is discussed in L. Lewis Wall, “The Medical Ethics of Dr. J Marion Sims: A Fresh Look at the Historical Record,” Journal of Medical Ethics 32, no. 6 (June 2006): 346–50; accessed March 2, 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563360/. 5 Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Random House, 2007). 6 Chirlane McCray@NYCFirstLady began tweeting on August 22, 2017. Among other things, she remarked, “Some call J. Marion Sims the ‘Father of Gynecology,’ which dismisses the pain of Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy. His statue doesn’t belong here.” One reply came from L. Lewis Wall, linking to the article cited above in note 3. 7 See, for example, David Gonzalez, “A Reminder, in Bronze, of Experiments on Slaves,” New York Times, August 21, 2017, A18, which cites the actions of the local community board; the call for removal by then City Council speaker Melissa MarkViverito urging the mayor to remove the statue; as well as Harriet Washington’s indictment of the statue as a “symbol of enslavement and genocide.” For a more extensive treatment with a similar frame see, J.C. Hallman, “Monumental Error: Will New York City Topple a Racist Statue?” Harper’s 335, no. 2010 (November 2017): 27–37. At the time of the statue’s removal, Benjamin Sutton referred to the Sims as “one of New York City’s most hated statues.” See Benjamin Sutton, “Statue of Gynecologist Who Experimented on Enslaved Women Removed from Central Park,” Hyperallergic, April 17, 2018, accessed March 2, 2020, https:/hyperallergic. com/438347/j-marion=sims=removed=central-park/?utm_source=email&utm_ medium=social&utm_campaign=sw. 8 Jonathan Kuhn, director of Art and Antiquities, New York City Parks & Recreation, in an email to the author dated November 20, 2017, observed that the issue became more complex the more he researched. He noted that Dr. Sims actually raised the issue of consent, regardless of class or race, something that was not codified into law until much later. For an extensive bibliography on the subject, see the New York Parks Department file on the statue. 9 Steven Lomazow, M.D., “Let’s Keep the Central Park Statue of Dr. James Marion Sims,” History News Network, September 11, 2017, accessed September 11, 2017, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/166890. He notes that Queen Victoria was not given anesthesia for giving birth until her seventh child, who was delivered in 1847. 10 For the evolution of the treatment of this condition, see Amanda Andrei, “James Marion Sims’s Treatment of Vesico-Vaginal Fistula,” The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, accessed March 2, 2020, https://embryo.asu.edu/print/pages/james-marion-simsstreat-vesico-vaginal-fistual. 11 Commission Report, 20. 12 “Green-Wood Cemetery Accepts a Second Disgraced Statue: Monument to 19thCentury Doctor Who Experimented on Slaves Gets a New Home,” Brooklyn

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15

16 17

18

19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

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Daily Eagle, April 17, 2018, accessed March 2, 2020, https://brooklyneagle.com/ articles/2018/04/07/green-wood-cemetery-accepts-a-second-disgraced-statue/. The first statue referred to in the title was Frederick William MacMonnies’ Civic Virtue. Nicole Brown, “J. Marion Sims’ ‘Racist Legacy’ Denounced by Green-Wood Cemetery Neighbor,” AMNY, April 19, 2018, accessed March 2, 2020, https://www.amny.com./ news/j-marion-sims-statue-1-18150041/. Although I had originally voted to keep the base, after seeing it stand alone, I came to think that it served little purpose. In a subsequent conversation with Darren Walker who had been in favor of removing the base, we realized that we had both changed our minds. Salerno is quoted in Meagan Flynn, “Statue of ‘Father of Gynecology,’ Who Experimented on Enslaved Women, Removed from Central Park,” Washington Post, April 18, 2018, accessed March 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ morning-mix/wp/2018/04/2018/sta … gy-who-experimented-on-enslved-womenremoved-from-centralpark/. Commission Report, 22. Ortiz is quoted in Helen Holmes, “Replacement of Monument Dedicated to J. Mario Sims Sparks Community Outcry,” Observer, October 8, 2019, accessed March 2, 2020, https://observer.com/2019/10/j-marion-sims-monument-harlem-sculpturereplacement-simone leigh-vinnie-bagwell/. For a summary of the event, see Hakim Bishara, “‘We Feel Very Betrayed’: Community Protests Replacement for J. Marion Sims Monument.” Hyperallergic, October 7, 2019, accessed March 2, 2020, https://hyperallergic.com/521269/we-feelvery-betrayed-community-protests-replacement-for-j-marion-sims-monument/. The subsequent information on the sculpture, unless otherwise noted, is taken from my report to the Museum: Harriet F. Senie, “Report to the American Museum of Natural History—Theodore Roosevelt Memorial” (unpublished report, September 30, 2018). In May 1951, when James Earle Fraser received the gold medal of the American Academy and National Institute of Arts & Letters, Aline Louchheim published an article titled, “Most Famous Unknown Sculptor,” New York Times, May 13, 1951, accessed September 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/1951/05/13/archives/mostfamous-unknown-sculptor-james-earle-fraser-whose-statues-are.html. Today, Fraser is probably best known for his sculpture of a Native American on horseback, End of the Trail, and the reliefs on the buffalo nickel. Quoted in Senie, “Report to the American Museum of Natural History,” 13. Letter from Fraser to General McCoy, October 9, 1940, James Earle Fraser archives, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Quoted in Senie, “Report to the American Museum of Natural History,” 11. Darrin Lunde, The Naturalist, Theodore Roosevelt: A Lifetime of Exploration, and the Triumph of American Natural History (New York: Broadway Books, 2016), 1–2. Commission Report, 26. For their mission statement, see, Decolonize This Place, “Movement Space,” accessed March 26, 2020, https://decolonizethisplace.org/movement-space. These remarks were made during several conversations and confirmed in an email dated March 25, 2020. Edward Burmila, “The Invention of Christopher Columbus, American Hero,” The Nation, October 9, 2017, accessed March 3, 2020, https://www.thenation.com/article/ archive/the-invention-of-christopher-columbus-american-hero/.

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29 A succinct account of the Italian American context of the statue is provided by Jennifer Vanasco, “The Complicated History of the Christopher Columbus Statue,” WNYC, December 5, 2017, accessed March 3, 2020, https://www.wnyc.org/story/ complicated-history-christopher-columbus-statue/. Unless otherwise noted, this account is based on her report. 30 In the weeks surrounding Thanksgiving, one hearing was held in each of the five boroughs; given the timing, attendance was remarkably robust. Individuals were invited to present their opinions on each of the controversial works. I was able to attend the hearings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. 31 Commission Report, 28. 32 Burmilla, cited above. 33 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014), presents a well-documented and accessible account of American history from an alternative and more accurate perspective. The following discussion, unless otherwise noted, is taken from her account. 34 Commission Report, 29. 35 Ibid., 30. 36 Ibid., 30. Seven specific suggestions on how to present another context are found on page 31. 37 Adam Serwer, “Why a Statue of the ‘Father of Gynecology’ Had to Come Down: J. Marion Sims’s Advances in Medical Science Were Made through Experimentation on Enslaved Women,” Atlantic, April 18, 2018, accessed March 2, 2020, https://www. theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/why-a-statue-of-the-father-of-gynecologyhad-to-come-down/558311/. 38 My thanks to Michele Cohen for pointing this out and providing the example of the deaccessioning policy for Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County program she worked on available at https://www.montgomeryplanning.org/ development/public_art/documents/mc_public_art_guidelines.pdf, accessed June 21, 2020. 39 Julian Baggini, “Not All Slopes Are Slippery,” TLS, June 7, 2020, accessed June 21, 2020, https://www.the-tls-co-uk/articles/not-all-slopes-areslippery/. 40 Alex Horton, “Army Activates 400 Guard Troops to Protect Monuments in Washington, D.C.,” Washington Post, June 24, 2020, accessed June 21, 2020, https//www.washingtonpost.com/nationalsecurity/2020/06/24/dc-guard-activation/. 41 Reuvan Fenton and Tamar Lapin, “Protesters Rally to Save Museum of Natural History’s Teddy Roosevelt Statue,” New York Post, June 28, 2020, accessed June 28, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/06/28/protesters-rally-to-save-museum-of-naturalhistorys-roosevelt-statue/. 42 Gonzalo Casals, telephone conversation with the author, June 21, 2020.

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The Preservation Dilemma: Confronting Two Controversial Monuments in the United States Capitol By Michele Cohen

Permanency and public art are not always compatible. Shared communal values do not necessarily endure from one generation to another. What happens when the questionable elements of official monumental art collide with a preservation mandate? Is there a way to reconcile the two that reorients preservation so that the idea of a monument is preserved without the intrusion of its physical presence? In this paper, I make the arguments that responsible stewardship can mean “virtual preservation,” which would permit elective viewing of the work in a virtual environment, and that it is in the public interest to address and contextualize public art that raises difficult questions about our nation’s history. As the Curator for the Architect of the Capitol, I am responsible for preserving some of the nation’s most iconic and problematic public art. What is “responsible stewardship” for an artwork that communicates a now unpopular (or even overtly offensive) worldview? Can interpretation and contextualization counterbalance negative stereotypes? How does an artwork’s historical or artistic significance affect the decision to preserve it or make it accessible to the public? Here I consider two monumental sculptural groups now hidden from public view but long the subjects of public and scholarly attention. Once adornments on the East Front of the United States Capitol, today Discovery of America (1837–44) by Luigi Persico and Rescue (1837–53) by Horatio Greenough (Figure 10.1) are damaged, fragmented, and crated in a storeroom on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Their marble surfaces are eroded and crusted with gypsum. Hands and fingers are missing, feet and heads severed, and torsos disconnected from legs. Yet despite their poor condition, or perhaps because of it, they are powerful reminders of grand civic art that no longer communicates civic ideals. They stood for over a century on the north and south cheek blocks of the East Front of the United States Capitol, the backdrop to many inaugurations. They were also the public face of legislation passed before and during their creation, such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the annexation of Texas in 1845, Oregon in 1846, and California in 1848.

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Figure 10.1  Photographs of the sculptures in situ, taken before 1920. Left: Discovery of America, marble by Luigi Persico, 1836–44. Right: Rescue, marble by Horatio Greenough, 1836–53. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol.

In 1958, a combination of factors, including their poor condition, the extension of the East Front, and sustained negative public sentiment, led to their removal and eventual storage at Fort Meade, Maryland. Native Americans objected to Rescue’s tomahawk-wielding savage and the undignified, unclothed Native American woman shrinking from Columbus in Discovery as disparaging “the true character of the first Americans.”1 Fallen from grace, Discovery and Rescue pose a preservation dilemma that is also an educational opportunity (Figures 10.2 and 10.3). Given the Architect of the Capitol’s preservation mission, what does responsible stewardship mean in this instance? Should they be conserved and made accessible to the public? If so, with what funds, how, and where? Alternatively, could they be exhibited in some fashion in their current state? Clearly, we need to consider a series of questions: How were they viewed at the time they were commissioned and how are they viewed today? What is their current condition? What is the scholarly discourse about these sculptures? Would it be ethical curatorial practice to display only one of the pair or a damaged or partial sculpture? What solutions have been proposed in the past, and are any of them still viable? Senators and a president sanctioned the commissioning of these works. In 1836, Pennsylvania Senator James Buchanan (two decades before becoming the fifteenth

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Figure 10.2  The figure of Columbus from Discovery is supported on padded blocks in storage. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol.

Figure 10.3  Rescue in storage. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol.

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president of the United States) recommended that Italian sculptor and fellow Lancaster, Pennsylvania, resident Luigi Persico create two sculptural groups to flank the Capitol’s East entrance steps. Persico had already completed other architectural sculptures for the Capitol: the sandstone Genius of America (1828) for the pediment and the marble figures War and Peace (both 1834) in the niches. For one of the cheek blocks, Persico created a model of Discovery of America showing a conquering Columbus in full military regalia with a cowering, partially nude Native American woman crouching beside him. Buchanan’s desire that Persico execute two sculptural groups, however, went unfulfilled. Senators William C. Preston and John C. Calhoun insisted that an American artist undertake the companion piece and, in 1837, Congress authorized President Martin Van Buren to execute a $24,000 contract with Persico to carve his Columbus in marble and another contract with an unspecified artist for a companion sculpture. The 1838 selection of Horatio Greenough was the young sculptor’s second federal assignment, following his 1832 commission to execute a colossal statue of George Washington as Zeus for the Capitol Rotunda to commemorate the centennial of Washington’s birth.2 (If the public and Congress had seen his completed bare-chested Washington, they might have reconsidered, but it was not unveiled until 1841.) For the cheek block, Greenough created Rescue, which portrayed a pioneer woodsman restraining a Native American warrior from attacking a recumbent mother and child as an open-jawed dog barks nearby. Greenough’s contract for $21,000 was supplemented by an additional Congressional appropriation of $7,000 to transport and erect the five-piece group, which was installed in 1853, a year after the sculptor’s death.3 Statements about the intended meaning of each sculptural group preceded their carving in marble. Senator Buchanan shaped the narrative for Discovery, observing that Persico’s model depicted “the great discoverer when he first bounded with ecstasy upon the shore, all his toils past, presenting a hemisphere to the astonished world, with the name America inscribed upon it. Whilst he is thus standing upon the shore, a female savage, with awe and wonder depicted in her countenance, is gazing upon him.”4 Greenough himself explained his intent behind Rescue, which exploited the drama of First Contact between unlike cultures.5 His various working titles for Rescue reveal that his own thinking about the meaning of the sculpture evolved from stridency to subtlety, eventually swinging back to a more neutral title and a slightly less violent image. Art historian Richard Saunders cites an 1853 letter from Greenough to Senator Edward Everett that records the original title as The Indian and the Backwoodsman, but a drawing dated 1839 by Baldassarre Calamai in the collection of the Uffizi entitles the sculpture Civilization Preventing a Savage from Committing a Crime.6 In contrast to The Indian and the Backwoodsman, which conjures up images of a friendly meeting in the forest, Civilization Preventing a Savage from Committing a Crime is more pointedly provocative. It demonizes the Native American figure as a vicious adversary, whose aggression must be suppressed. Greenough effectively casts the figures as types, interacting as if on stage in a morality play. As Greenough wrote to Secretary of State John Forsyth shortly after winning the commission, he intended the sculpture “to

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convey the idea of the triumph of the whites over the savage tribes, at the same time that it illustrates the dangers of peopling the country.”7 Greenough did not shy away from the use of melodrama and sensationalism to trigger an emotional response in the viewer. His final choice of title, Rescue, heroicizes the white pioneer and conveys a moralizing message that justifies Native American displacement, but it does so without emphasizing the inevitable resulting violence. At the time, the sculpture was unveiled, newspapers referred to it as The Triumph of Civilization, suggesting that Greenough’s message was popularly understood.8 For most Americans during the period the sculptures were created, Discovery and Rescue represented stages in the inevitable dissemination of European culture across the New World. As art historian Vivien Green Fryd and other scholars have argued, many nineteenth-century Americans saw Columbus’ discovery of America as inextricably linked to Manifest Destiny and the settling of the West, spreading civilization from the Atlantic shores to the Pacific coast. Greenough’s sculpture legitimizes colonization and celebrates the divine right to settle this expansive land as the natural corollary to Columbus’ discovery. Stylistically, the two cheek block sculptures are quite different. Discovery freezes Columbus in a melodramatic pose with a strong frontal orientation; the Rescue group stands in a sinuous S-curve configuration and depicts violent action. Persico draws our eye to Columbus’ upraised arm and face, modeled on a Spanish portrait bust said to be the definitive likeness of the explorer, and dresses him in authentic armor. He looks forward into the distance, presumably across the vast, unexplored continent. The unclothed female Native American twists to stare at him, redirecting our gaze to the central protagonist. Discovery reinforces a singular action, while Rescue is a more complex amalgam consisting of five figures. Its focus is the central group of the male Native American warrior and the larger, almost mythical pioneer/scholar who rises behind him, subdues him in an arm lock, and immobilizes his upraised tomahawk.9 To the left and behind lie the warrior’s intended victims, the semi-recumbent white pioneer mother and infant; the dog on the right balances the pyramidal composition. Greenough adds complexity by enlarging the visual mass of the pioneer, in part by clothing him in a Renaissancestyle scholar’s cap and gown. This unrealistic garb, coupled with his placid expression, transforms the pioneer into a morally superior force, the spirit of civilization, which defeats with great equanimity the generalized representation of the uncivilized Native American warrior. His billowing cloak signifies an enveloping cultural dominance to which the savage must inevitably succumb.10 In an earlier version, the Native American was wounded, but Greenough’s federal patrons asked him to remove this gory detail, perhaps leading to his retitling of the sculpture.11 Greenough’s Rescue has significant art historical value, in both its conception and execution. In designing it, Greenough combined classical sources with acute observation to render recognizable American subjects. Greenough looked to the Laocoon (first century CE) for the twisted torso and overall pose of the Native American, and the Niobid Group (Roman copies found in 1583, brought to Rome around 1770, now in Uffizi; date/location of Greek originals unknown) inspired the mother and child. The

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Farnese Bull (second century BCE) provided a prototype illustrating a highly complex pyramidal composition.12 Both Persico and Greenough designed their sculptures as symbolic markers to be viewed from a frontal vantage point, either from a distance or from the stairs leading up to the Capitol Rotunda. Persico, unfortunately, failed to consider that his unclothed crouching female figure would be viewed from the rear by every visitor and legislator who descended from the Rotunda. Persico’s Discovery was installed first, in 1844, on the upper south cheek block, so Rescue had to occupy the upper north block to balance the classical composition. The installation after Greenough’s death raised questions about the artist’s intended configuration and sparked debate. Decisions about its placement and final configuration fell to B.B. French, commissioner of Public Buildings, and sculptor Clark Mills, who was hired to oversee the installation. The two did the best they could, despite ambiguities and the fact that the sculpture’s base was two feet wider than the block that Greenough specified for its location. Shortly afterward, responding to a critique in the Daily National Intelligencer, French acknowledged that the sculpture was too high but inferred from Greenough’s assembly instructions “that the group is of the height he intended it to be.” He also observed that, in his opinion, the group “should be placed by itself somewhere in the public grounds at a proper height with a mound of earth sloping off gradually on all sides.”13 Greenough’s brother Henry seems to have put the matter to rest, explaining in a letter to Edward Everett that “when these pieces are properly put together, the spectator has a front view of the Indians [sic] and backwoodsmen facing the center of the composition, and a front view of the mother and child which are on the left of the spectator, although on the right of the principle [sic] figures.”14 Saunders provides conclusive evidence regarding the configuration in the form of a drawing that confirms Greenough’s final intent; this differs from the 1839 Uffizi drawing, which shows the mother and child in front and lacks the dog.15 A comparison of the drawing with the assembled sculpture also offers insight into the evolution of Greenough’s thinking about the relationship of the pioneer to the Native American. In the final version, Greenough not only made adjustments to create eye contact between the pioneer and the Native American, but actually emphasized it. The initial design presents conflict chiefly on a philosophical plane—civilization subdues savagery. The final design adds a psychological dimension, in which one man confronts another, and imbues the scene with an emotional center. The sort of First Contact that Greenough depicted was a narrative of conquest and defeat, the former justified by savage acts that threatened the purity and innocence of maternal love.16 John Vanderlyn, another artist represented in the Capitol, had illustrated a similar viewpoint in his painting Death of Jane McCrea (1804, Wadsworth Athanaeum, Hartford, Connecticut). Fryd and others have also explored how Greenough’s Rescue inverts the “captivity narrative,” an American literary genre first appearing in the writings of Puritan settlers in which a colonial Euro-American is captured and escaped, is ransomed or rescued, or assimilates into the captor’s community. Here the restrained Native American warrior assumes the role of the captured white person. Greenough’s purposeful dichotomy between primitivism and

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civilization eliminates any ambiguity about the government’s expansionist policies: for him and his patron, these policies were necessary and justified. Greenough had a deep friendship with author James Fenimore Cooper, whose Last of the Mohicans was published in 1826 and presumably influenced his thinking. But unlike Cooper, who over the course of a novel had the freedom to present a more nuanced view of “white civilization” versus “Native American savagery,” Greenough, as a sculptor of public art, presents a single dramatic moment that distills an unequivocal message into a figurative grouping. In considering the future disposition of the East Front sculptures, we also should take into account the artistic importance of the sculptors and the quality of the executed pieces. Of the two artists, Greenough has attracted more interest from American art historians. He is notable as America’s first professional native-born sculptor, and his controversial bare-chested George Washington resulted from the first Federal commission to an American sculptor. A significant amount of scholarship has been done on Greenough, most recently a book on the history of the George Washington monument.17 Specific work on Rescue includes Vivien Green Fryd’s foundational scholarship in her 1987 article and 1992 book Art and Empire, C. Joseph GenetinPilawa’s study of the effort to remove the sculptures, and Julie Sienkewicz’s current book project.18 Coupled with evaluating scholarly interest, we need to consider public reception of the sculpture over time. Nineteenth-century reactions to both sculptural groups were mixed. Many in Congress lauded them and saw the pair as a visual corollary to illustrate government policies that they supported. Congressman James E. Belser, a Democrat from Alabama, invoked Discovery of America in this argument for the acquisition of Texas: Let gentlemen look on those two figures which have so recently been erected on the eastern portico of this Capitol, and learn an instructive lesson. Gentlemen might laugh at the nudity of one of them; but the artist, when he made Columbus the superior of the Indian princess in every respect, knew what he was doing. And when he likewise placed the ball in his hand, he intended further to represent the power of civilization, and what were to be the effects of the discovery of that wonderful man … Freedom’s pure and heavenly light … would continue to burn, with increasing brightness, till it had illumined this entire continent …19

Several critics objected to the crouching female figure, because of both her nakedness and her stance, but they did not challenge the sculpture’s overarching message. Commentators criticized Rescue for its compositional disunity, maligning the dog for its unintelligible breed and placement, and they criticized the group as a whole for being too aspirational, because “the very exaggeration of the design renders it weak and meaningless.”20 Soon after Rescue’s installation in 1858, the Washington Art Union Association recommended that both sculptures be relocated to other public squares and replaced with works that would be “more in harmony with the general outline of the building.”21

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In the twentieth century, opposition to both sculptures intensified, particularly from Native American groups but also from sympathetic members of Congress. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, which acknowledged Native American cultures and sovereignty. In 1939, Congressman Usher Lloyd Burdick submitted a joint resolution recommending that Rescue be “ground into dust, and scattered to the four winds, that no more remembrance may be perpetuated of our barbaric past, and that it may not be a constant reminder to our American Indian citizens.”22 In 1941, the House considered a joint resolution to remove and replace Rescue with “a statue of one of the great Indian leaders famous in American history,” and in 1952 the California Indian Rights Association filed a petition to move Rescue and Discovery “to a proper museum” and fund a national competition to commission replacement sculptures, preferably by Native American artists.23 The petition’s key author, activist Leta Myers Smart, of the Omaha tribe from Nebraska, persisted throughout the 1950s, writing letters to Congress and to magazines and the Architect of the Capitol to take action. She took a practical approach, trying to identify alternative locations for the sculptures and reasoning that, for preservation reasons, they should be removed from their exterior location for indoor display. But of paramount significance for this discussion is the statement in the petition itself that Discovery and Rescue are “period pieces,” implying they are dated and now irrelevant. The petition states, “The fact that they are period pieces is not generally understood by the public, particularly the youth of the land,” and the petitioners expressed concern that young people would view them as historically accurate, perpetuating a false history.24 By this time, there was a consensus in America that the sculptures no longer reflected shared attitudes and values. As a corrective, the petitioners requested that a commission be created to oversee a national competition to solicit sketches for new sculptural groups “in which a general concept of the true character of the first Americans is portrayed.” Coupled with Smart’s unrelenting protests, the real impetus behind the removal of Discovery and Rescue was the East Front extension, which had been under consideration since the 1866 completion of Thomas Ustick Walter’s cast-iron dome. In 1955, Congress authorized funding to extend and recreate the sandstone East Front in more durable stone, including all the architectural sculpture—except Discovery and Rescue. In 1956, the decision makers were a five-man Commission for the Extension of the United States Capitol, which included Vice President Richard Nixon, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, and Architect of the Capitol J. George Stewart. Aware of potential controversy, the Committee balked at making a hasty decision about the final disposition of the sculptures, preferring to see how the restored East Front looked without them. Although the construction documents called for their reinstallation, it was easier to consign them to storage. Although Native American activists recommended a national competition to select a Native American artist to design replacement statues, the East Front extension project architects solicited designs from Paul Manship, dean of American figurative sculptors (and already a project consultant), and asked him to provide “aesthetically suitable” small-scale models of sculptural groups for the vacant cheek blocks.25 In Settlers of the East Coast, Manship eliminated the struggle between savagery and civilization; instead

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of Greenough’s menacing adult male warrior subdued by an enlightened pioneer, we see an upright youth leading a family hunting expedition. In the companion sculpture, Pioneers of the West, Manship replaced the victorious Columbus and scantily clad Native American woman with a family heading for a new home. Aiming for political correctness, Manship recast Manifest Destiny in a twentieth-century idiom that he thought would be more palatable to the public and Congress, but the result is merely a less-offensive version of the nineteenth-century originals. Manship died soon after, and no Congressional action was taken. Following the removal of Discovery and Rescue in 1958, many groups across the country expressed interest in exhibiting one or both of the sculptures, but the consensus among Washington officials and curators has been to keep them in the Washington area. Starting in 1971, with the support of leading museum directors and curators, then Architect of the Capitol George M. White made several attempts to preserve and exhibit Discovery and Rescue. The Smithsonian came forward as a natural partner, but conservation and exhibition plans never materialized. Damaged in transit, the sculptures are now broken, dirty, sugaring, eroded, and disfigured with gypsum crusts. In 1991, the United States Capitol Preservation Commission considered exhibiting the single figure of Columbus in the Capitol Complex in connection with the quincentennial celebration of his reaching the New World, but museum professionals and members of Congress advised against this, concerned about political correctness and the statue’s quality. The dog from Rescue was on loan to the Middlebury College Museum of Art for twenty years, where illustrated signage told the more complete story.26 In considering the ethical implications of displaying a damaged sculpture or just a piece of a sculptural group, it is useful to consider “A Code of Ethics for Curators” issued by the American Association of Museums in 2009. The section on guiding values states that curatorial work should “serve the public good by contributing to and promoting learning, inquiry, and dialogue, and by making the depth and breadth of human knowledge available to the public.”27 For me, as the Curator for the Architect of the Capitol, the essential question is what does serving the public good mean in this instance? Does it mean spending taxpayer dollars to conserve these sculptures and place them on public view, or does it mean providing a different form of public access to promote “learning, inquiry, and dialogue”? Scholars continue to inquire about the sculptures’ whereabouts and condition. Given the historic and artistic significance of Discovery and Rescue, I believe that we have a responsibility to actively preserve them, or at least their story, to serve as a touchstone for a rigorous examination of the larger issues these sculptures raise about racism in official visual narratives of American history. To that end, exhibit planners considered including the dog from Rescue in a new exhibition under development for the Capitol Visitor Center, but that idea did not gain traction. Technology provides a novel answer to this preservation conundrum. To be accessible, they do not necessarily have to be on view in a physical public space. It would be ill-advised and costly to restore the sculptures for display in a specific location, but it would be possible to create a virtual tour that would show them in their current condition and location and provide extensive historical information. The exhibition could also feature a

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public blackboard where visitors could leave comments. Other institutions, such as the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, recently experimented with a new curatorial approach to a controversial monument marking its entrance, the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt (1939) by architect James Russell Pope and sculptor James Earle Fraser. They mounted an exhibition to bring together multiple perspectives and to examine the monument from various viewpoints, addressing how it was commissioned, what it depicts, and who Roosevelt was.28 In June 2020, the Museum made the decision to remove it, but the exhibition is one model for the interpretation of Discovery and Rescue at the United States Capitol Visitor Center. Furthermore, in line with the recommendations made in the 1952 petition, there could be a competition for contemporary artists to re-envision sculpture for the East Front cheek blocks. Ultimately, I would argue that responsible stewardship in this instance means taking ownership, asking the difficult questions, and fostering a public conversation about public art in the United States Capitol. The views presented are the author’s own, and do not represent the views of the Architect of the Capitol, the Congress, or the United States.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5

6

7

Petition, December 1953, File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue Group-Indian Protests, Records of the Architect of the Capitol, Washington, DC (hereinafter, AOC). See Harry Rand, Horatio Greenough and the Form Majestic (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2019). For a detailed chronology of Rescue and Discovery, see Memorandum from Barbara A. Wolanin to Elliott Carroll, December 23, 1985, File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue Group-General, AOC; Nathalia Wright, Horatio Greenough: The First American Sculptor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), 159–77. For copies of the contract and legislation, see File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue Group-Contract and Legislation, AOC. Register of Debates, Senate, 24th Congress, 1st session, April 28, 1836, 1316. In an alternative iteration for the pendant piece, Greenough fashioned an allegory of George Washington ushering in America, depicted as a seated female, a subject that had been suggested to him. See Richard H. Saunders, Horatio Greenough: An American Sculptor’s Drawings (Middlebury, VT: Middlebury College Museum of Art, 1999), 101. Letter from Horatio Greenough to Edward Everett, September 1, 1853, National Archives, Letters Received, vol. 33, Numbers 3233–306, January 6, 1852, to December 23, 1853, Saunders, 101. For a reproduction, see Annarita Caputo, “Lorenzo Bartolini and Horatio Greenough: ‘Natura E Bellezza,’” in Lorenzo Bartolini: Beauty and Truth in Marble (Florence: Giunti, 2012), 116. Horatio Greenough to John Forsyth, November 15, 1837, written from Florence. See Nathalia Wright, Letters of Horatio Greenough American Sculptor (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972), 221.

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“Greenough’s Triumphs [sic] of Civilization,” Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage 23, no. 31 (September 17, 1853): 363, provided to the author by John Colletta. The juxtaposition of civilization with savagery is a theme on numerous Native American peace medals, including the James Buchanan Medal of 1857. See Francis Paul Prucha, Indian Peace Medals in American History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 119. 9 The pioneer figure has also been misidentified as Daniel Boone. 10 In her 2019 College Art Association talk, “Figuring Union: Hortatio Greenough, Luigi Persico, and Monumental Sculpture for the East Front of the United States Capitol,” Julia A. Sienkewicz explored the connection between Renaissance humanism and Greenough’s conception of the pioneer figure. 11 Natalia Wright references a letter from Acting Secretary of State Aaron Vail to Horatio Greenough, October 22, 1838 (State Department, Domestic Letters). 12 See Saunders, 99. 13 Letter from B.B. French to the editors of the National Intelligencer, dated November 11, 1853, and published as “Greenough’s Group,” Daily National Intelligencer, November 14, 1853, 3, column 4, transcribed. File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS. Folder: Rescue Group-General, AOC. 14 National Archives, Letters Received, vol. 33, numbers 3233–306, January 6, 1852, to December 23, 1853, quoted in Saunders, 104. 15 Henry Greenough to Edward Everett, September 1, 1853, File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS. Folder: Rescue Group-General, AOC. See also Saunders, 103–4, for a discussion of “Study for the Rescue.” 16 See Katherine Lynn Elliott, “Epic Encounters: First Contact Imagery in Nineteenth and Early-twentieth Century American Art” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2009). 17 Rand, Horatio Greenough and the Form Majestic. See also Wright, Horatio Greenough; and Sylvia E. Crane, White Silence; Greenough, Powers, and Crawford, American Sculptors in Nineteenth-century Italy (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1972). 18 Viven Green Fryd, “Two Sculptures for the Capitol: Horatio Greenough’s ‘Rescue’ and Luigi Persico’s ‘Discovery of America,’” American Art Journal 19, no. 2 (Spring, 1987): 16–39; and Viven Green Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860 (1992; reprint ed., Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001); C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, “A Curious Removal: Leta Myers Smart, the Rescue, and the Discovery of America,” Capitol Dome 52 (Spring 2015): 2–9; and Sienkewicz’s forthcoming book project, Form in Transit and Translation: Ideal Bodies and the Body Politic in the Atlantic World. 19 United States Congress, House, 28th Congress, 2nd session, Congressional Globe, January 1845, appendix, p. 43, quoted in Fryd, 21. 20 F.C. Adams, “Art in the District of Columbia,” Report to the Commissioner of Education, February 11, 1858, Washington Art Union Association, vol. H, No. 9, 759. File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue Group-General, AOC. 21 Ibid. 22 House, 76th Congress, 1st session, April 26, 1939, House Joint Resolution 276. 23 House, 77th Congress, 1st session, April 14, 1941, House Resolution 176. Petition, December 1953, File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue GroupIndian Protests, AOC. 8

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24 Leta Myers Smart, “The Last Rescue,” Harper’s 219, no. 1313 (October 1959): 92 in File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Rescue Group-Indian Protests, AOC; Petition, December 1953. 25 George Stewart to Paul Manship, April 5, 1961, File: STATUES: CAPITOL & GROUNDS, Folder: Pioneers, AOC. 26 The exhibition was held at Middlebury College in 1999 and the dog remained on display until August of 2019, when it was returned to the United States Capitol. 27 American Association of Museums Curators Committee, “A Code of Ethics for Curators,” (2009), 4, accessed August 19, 2019, https://www.aam-us.org/wp-content/ uploads/2018/01/curcomethics.pdf. 28 “Addressing the Statue,” American Museum of National History, accessed August 20, 2019, https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/addressing-the-theodore-roosevelt-statue.

11

Up against the Wall: Commemorating and Framing the Vietnam War on the National Mall By Jennifer K. Favorite

Arguably one of the best-known war memorials in the United States, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM or the Wall, designed by Maya Ying Lin) has, since 1982, demonstrated the therapeutic potential for commemorative structures to address complicated aspects of US national history. Initially a subject of controversy due to its paradigm-shifting minimalist aesthetic, the VVM almost instantly became one of the most-visited sites on the National Mall, and its popularity continues to this day.1 Completed only seven years after the Vietnam War’s end, the VVM pointedly made no political statement on the war, which had been the subject of both widespread antiwar protests and staunch US government support. Upon its dedication, the VVM offered a divided public a means to reckon with the contentious engagement that continues to hold a symbolically fraught place in US history, as it is widely acknowledged to be the first military conflict the nation did not “win.”2 From its early days, the VVM became host to a ritual of visitors leaving objects at the Wall in tribute to the fallen, whose over 58,200 names are inscribed in the reflective black granite of the memorial. By 1986, this public practice grew to such an extent that the US National Park Service (NPS) began to systematically collect and archive the items, which ranged from handwritten letters and photographs to Vietnam War-era military paraphernalia and bottles of whiskey. This transformation of the VVM into a proxy gravesite for mourning individual war deaths is profound testimony to the memorial’s effectiveness in offering space for healing and contemplation, in large part due to its nonrepresentational design. Despite these established accomplishments, the memorial’s oversight body, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF or the Fund), led by founder and Vietnam War veteran Jan C. Scruggs, spent nearly twenty years pursuing the construction of a Vietnam War interpretive center on the National Mall near the memorial.3 Although the campaign to build what became known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Education Center (VVMEC or the Center) began in 2000, it grew out of a 1990s educational effort by the Fund in the form of publications and a secondary school curriculum on the legacy of the Vietnam War.4 Approved by the US Congress in 2003, the VVMEC evolved from a 1,200 square foot kiosk into a 37,000 square foot, $130 million underground multimedia facility featuring photographs of servicemembers

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named on the memorial, exhibitions of objects left by visitors to the VVM, a timeline of the Vietnam War, and an entrance hall honoring US war participation since the American Revolution.5 In contrast to the VVM, whose lack of triumphant rhetoric and absence of comment on the war promote discourse, allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions on sacrifice in the line of battle, the VVMEC project as conceived by the Fund constituted a counter-experience to the memorial, advocating narratives focused on emotion and heroism, and casting the Vietnam War not as a “lost cause,” but as a noble endeavor. After repeatedly failing to raise the money required to build the VVMEC, the Fund abandoned the project in September 2018. However, the length of the VVMEC effort and its narratives reframing the war and the VVM, the second most visited memorial on the National Mall, make it worthy of study. When considered alongside the impact of the VVM the story of the VVMEC opens up questions on how the history and commemoration of a war can and should be imagined among the population, who has authority over that history, and how memorials may intercede in the process. It was a perceived need to give historical context for the Vietnam War at the memorial site that generated the VVMF’s campaign for the Center. Scruggs explained that educators expressed their desires for “something at the Wall,” as they claimed their students increasingly had little to no knowledge about the events of the war.6 This preoccupation with young people and their understanding of the Vietnam War was evident throughout the promotional campaign for the VVMEC, suggesting that a prevailing concern that a momentous chapter in US war history will somehow be forgotten by ensuing generations was the driving force behind the project. Rather than prioritizing the VVM as a mediator in the past and present US cultural consciousness surrounding the Vietnam War, the Fund prioritized its own apparent desires to rework the war’s legacy along the lines of personalized narratives and celebration of military service. When the Fund launched its twentieth-century effort to build a Vietnam War memorial on the National Mall, it sought to pay tribute to human losses while simultaneously separating the soldier from the war. By contrast, the Fund’s twenty-first-century campaigns recast the VVM as evidence that the Vietnam War and military duty were worthy undertakings, irrespective of their actual outcomes. Jan C. Scruggs established the grassroots, private, non-profit organization VVMF in 1979 to win official recognition by the United States for those killed during the military conflict in Vietnam.7 Scruggs, along with fellow veterans, formed the Fund specifically to raise the money required to build a national memorial to the war’s servicemembers. Following an architectural competition open to the public, a jury of arts and design professionals selected the submission by Maya Lin, a 21-yearold college student born in the United States to Chinese immigrants.8 The resulting structure consists of two 246-foot-long-polished black granite arms that intersect in a V-form and contain seventy panels engraved with the names of the war dead. They are set into the earth of the National Mall, and from their outer edges they follow a downward path, with each wall rising gradually in height to an apex of 10 feet at their juncture. The top corner of the east arm of the Wall, which points to the Washington Monument, bears the date of the first US casualty from the Vietnam War: 1959. An inscription follows:

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IN HONOR OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES WHO SERVED IN THE VIETNAM WAR. THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES AND OF THOSE WHO REMAIN MISSING ARE INSCRIBED IN THE ORDER THEY WERE TAKEN FROM US.

Counterposed at the lowest corner of the adjacent west arm of the Wall, angled toward the Lincoln Memorial, is the date of the last US battle casualty: 1975. Below it, the memorial notes, OUR NATION HONORS THE COURAGE, SACRIFICE AND DEVOTION TO DUTY AND COUNTRY OF ITS VIETNAM VETERANS. THIS MEMORIAL WAS BUILT WITH PRIVATE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. NOVEMBER 11, 1982.

Upon the announcement of Lin’s winning design there was protest among some veterans who were displeased with its abstract aesthetic. Specifically, they regarded its horizontal orientation and black stone as too radical a departure from familiar models of memorials seeking to commemorate military service.9 Examples of such types erected across history include the triumphal arch, the equestrian statue, and the monumental column or obelisk. In contrast to these traditional white stone, vertical public war monuments, which would typically be visible from a distance and would connote victory through their brilliance against the landscape, the VVM is visible only through proximity to its site, into which it descends. Moreover, its black granite suggested to some a funereal tone—it is the color most closely associated with mourning, not with victory. Lin considered white stone to be “too blinding,” and stated the mirror effect of the polished surface “makes two worlds, it doubles the size of the park,” while creating “a very comforting area.”10 To her supporters, Lin’s design choices spoke to the trajectory of the conflict, which the US government entered to combat the spread of communist rule in Southeast Asia under the aegis of the Cold War, but from which it struggled to disentangle itself, despite mounting losses of lives on all sides and a growing US public desire to withdraw. Seeking to mollify critics of Lin’s minimalist design, the Fund acquiesced to add two more conventional and patriotic structures at the site. These were a US flagpole and a figural sculpture the Fund commissioned, The Three Servicemen, by Frederick Hart (1984), which realistically depicts three over-lifesized US soldiers dressed in period uniform and standing alert during patrol duty.11 Once construction on these VVM additions finished, responsibilities for the memorial site transferred to the NPS, and the Fund was to be dissolved.12 Although its operations closed in 1985, in 1992 Scruggs reestablished the organization, as he later explained, to play a “caretaker” role for the memorial, “to make sure it was well cared for and make sure it was not co-opted by any other groups.”13 In November 1989, Congress approved the location for the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, designed by Glenna Goodacre, which received its dedication in 1993. The Fund oversaw the last addition to the memorial site, a plaque installed in 2004 to acknowledge the deaths of veterans brought about by circumstances of the Vietnam War, including post-traumatic

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stress disorder and exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange.14 In July 2000, following the passage of legislation for the plaque, Scruggs gave an interview where, as caretaker of the Wall, he made clear that the VVM was a landmark to be protected from further expansion: “There are certain works of architecture in the world that should be allowed to make a statement without additions … We must get Congress to bring an end to permanent new additions to the Vietnam memorial, just as France has done with the Eiffel Tower and Egypt has done with the Pyramids.”15 In spite of Scruggs’ request that the VVM receive no more additions to its site, in September 2000 the Fund announced its plans to construct an education center on the memorial’s 3-acre site, noting it would “feature displays that examine the Vietnam War era, discuss the efforts to build the Memorial and explain the transformation of the Memorial from national healer to international icon.”16 Scruggs and the Fund chose a location for the VVMEC directly west of the VVM across Henry Bacon Drive to maintain a meaningful proximity to the memorial itself so its relation to Maya Lin’s wall would be clear.17 From these early plans, the VVMEC expanded in both size and scope to eventually become a bi-level multimedia interpretive center focused not on the memorial, but on narratives normalizing the Vietnam War and military engagement as worthwhile patriotic endeavors, construed through a military entrance hall, a war timeline, displays from the memorial’s object collection, and a “Wall of Faces.” What transpired between July 2000, when Scruggs urged Congress to prevent new construction at the memorial, and September 2000, when Scruggs arranged the Center’s announcement, is left to speculation. It is possible Scruggs objected to additions at the memorial not generated by the Fund, as the campaign to add the “In Memory” plaque was a grassroots effort by relatives of veterans who suffered postwar injuries and casualties. Whatever the case, Scruggs and the Fund appeared concerned to exercise their “caretaker” role at the VVM in new ways that would contextualize the memorial according to their twenty-first-century ideas on the Vietnam War and its legacy. Moreover, the campaign for the VVMEC indicates that at some point between 1982 and 2000 Scruggs and the Fund came to consider the abstract visual language of Maya Lin’s wall to be deficient in its ability to “engage” and educate visitors, and that images, historical narratives, and personal information were necessary to reframe the site along the Fund’s evolving standards.18 Such thinking speaks to how memorials often pass through distinct phases of existence: the first being their erection and unveiling to an attentive and concerned group of citizens—in this case veterans of the Vietnam War and their supporters. The second phase is a period of lessened interest and sometimes neglect by successive generations of the populace. A memorial near the VVM that exemplifies this process is the District of Columbia War Memorial (Frederick H. Brooke, Nathan C. Wyeth, and Horace W. Peaslee), installed along the edge of the National Mall, just south of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Dedicated in 1931 to Washington, DC, residents killed during the First World War, the Doric rotunda fell into such a state of disrepair by 2003 that preservationists named it one of Washington’s “most endangered places” until it received a full rehabilitation in 2010.19 Nearly forty years after its dedication, the VVM has escaped such a fate. Since its 1982 opening, visitation to the VVM has

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remained high; its upkeep is guaranteed by its siting and NPS oversight, and there are millions of US Vietnam War veterans still living as of this writing.20 Yet, as Scruggs argued, there is no doubt that many who visit the VVM know little about the Vietnam War. For those visitors, the memorial’s distinct lack of comment on the Vietnam War does not aid in expanding knowledge of it. This effect was deliberate in 1980, when the Fund set the guidelines for the VVM design. It was to be “contemplative and reflective in character,” and was “not to be a political statement,” but intended “to honor the service and memory of the war’s dead, its missing, and its veterans—not the war itself. The memorial should be conciliatory, transcending the tragedy of the war.”21 In this way, the Fund’s latter-day aims to offer background on the conflict adjacent to the memorial may seem fitting. Information on the war and its place in US history would amplify the VVM’s enduring power to make visible the war’s losses and its intrinsic potential to engage the visitor through its names and its design. Writers have highlighted the memorial’s capacity for promoting discourse on the Vietnam War, its place in US history, and war in general. Philosopher Charles L. Griswold described the VVM’s design as being “fundamentally interrogative,” implying questions on whether those named on the Wall died in vain and what constitutes valid justification for US war deaths.22 Cultural historian Marita Sturken noted how the VVM’s rejection of traditional war memorial aesthetics constituted an equivalent rejection of their common role to effect closure of the conflict, leaving open questions on the Vietnam War and future wars.23 Notably, art historian Kirk Savage characterized the VVM as “the capital’s first true victim monument,” pointing to its conception as a conciliatory structure and not as a monument glorifying heroism or the nation’s military legacy, given that the war was unwinnable in the end.24 Supplying visitors new to the history of the Vietnam War with some foregrounding of the memorial’s role in addressing the war could deepen their experience of it. Ultimately, the Fund decided to pursue an approach that diminished any exploration of the memorial’s origins as a contemplative and reflective space in this vein, turning instead to explicit depictions of the “tragedy of the war” in various installations and multimedia displays. All exhibitions for the VVMEC were the work of New York City design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA), best known for its work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall. Although the VVMEC displays never reached a final stage due to the project’s 2018 cancellation, preliminary versions by RAA offer evidence for what they would present. They followed criteria developed in 2011 by the Fund and NPS in an interpretive plan for the Center, among which were to: “help visitors discover the stories of those named on The Wall,” “display a sample of the collection of objects left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” “encourage visitors to learn more about the war, The Wall, and the values of those who serve in the U.S. Armed Forces,” “commemorate the values of service,” and “show the continuing love of the surviving families, the continuing pilgrimage they make to the Wall.”25 Revealed in the directives is the intent to create an interpretive narrative celebrating personal stories and war participation. The entrance hall to the Center was a “Legacy of Service” exhibition flanked on one side by the flags of each branch of the US military, and on the other by portraits

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of soldiers from each US conflict—“from Bunker Hill to Baghdad”—with an intended emphasis not on the reasons for war, but on military engagement as patriotic undertaking.26 To link the Vietnam War with the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Second World War in this way suggests that the Fund specifically sought to normalize the Vietnam War among these other, so-called nobler wars. As the first interpretive component of the Education Center, “The Legacy of Service” invited visitors to consider the Vietnam War in the same light as any other US conflict, rather than as a rupture in the succession of the “good wars” which preceded it and were plausibly justified.27 As such, the Vietnam War would be recast not as the controversial conflict the United States lost, but as an example of US military might, in direct contradiction to the Fund’s imperatives for the VVM. The VVMF collection exhibition was to display approximately 6,500 of the more than 200,000 objects visitors to the VVM have left at the foot of the black granite wall since the 1980s.28 As of 2013, the proposal was to display them in a chronological configuration demonstrating the changing patterns of donations and divided into thematic categories, such as “close to the loss,” “shared experience of war,” and “evolved meaning.”29 The array of objects for the displays was vast, with multiple examples of items such as American flags, helmets, Purple Heart decorations, and letters to and from those named on the Wall. A select number of the objects—approximately fifty—were to be “highlighted” by didactic labels.30 As a result, interpretation of the majority of the collection on view would have relied on the visitor’s ability to identify and draw conclusions from them without the benefit of the authoritative voice of a historian or curator. Estranged from their intended functions as tribute, once installed in the VVMEC these objects would have become mythologized into a fiction of grief, anger, loss, affection, and patriotism. Although intended for an education center, one wonders what value these personal objects would have presented as instructive matter on the facts of the Vietnam War. When faced with over 6,000 objects on view, it is possible visitors would have been unable to spend adequate time thinking about each item on display. As a result, they may have exited the Center only able to recall that they viewed flags, helmets, medals, and letters, not why they were exhibited, what they represented, how they functioned in the history of the war, or what, if any, relationship they bore to the commemorative structure that prompted their display. The VVMEC plan to place a timeline of the Vietnam War adjacent to the VVM represented a distinct rhetorical break from the memorial, which includes only the dates of the US war casualties and the brief inscriptions informing visitors the Wall stands to honor those who served and noting its funding and date of dedication. In 1980 the Fund dictated there be a minimum of historical context on the memorial to ensure that the VVM would be “a symbol for national unity and reconciliation after the controversy of the Vietnam War.”31 The VVMEC timeline rejected this directive and would have explicitly revived the wartime debates that split the nation. Although the Center timeline was never finalized, a virtual timeline on the VVMF website serves as a likely view of what the Center would have contained.32 It offers a heavily sanitized version of the Vietnam War and the war era that does not permit a full understanding

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of the historical events, circumstances, or controversies that defined the conflict. For example, November 12, 1969, “My Lai Massacre Reaches U.S.” reads, “As ‘the most shocking episode of the Vietnam War,’ the My Lai Massacre was the mass killing of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. Army soldiers.” It continues, “Despite the atrocities of the day, Hugh Thompson Jr., a U.S. Army helicopter pilot, tried to stop the killings and rescued Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs.”33 The date of the massacre itself, the US public reaction to it once revealed in the news media, the conviction of the US lieutenant imprisoned for the killings and his later pardon by President Richard M. Nixon are absent. Although this is but one example, it demonstrates the apparent difficulty of producing a comprehensive interpretive narrative on the Vietnam War. This underscores the ingenuity of the VVM. In representing memory, not history, and in seeking reconciliation, the memorial’s discursive space both evokes and transcends the contentious realities of the engagement, still fresh in the US collective consciousness upon the VVM’s construction. The most publicized feature of the VVMEC was its “Wall of Faces” of US servicemembers killed during the Vietnam War. Initially referred to as “Making the Names Visible,” the “Wall of Faces” required a massive effort to gather at least one photograph of each person whose name appears on the VVM.34 In the Center, the plan was for the “Wall of Faces” to project a servicemember’s portrait in large scale on their birthday, accompanied by their name and information, like their name’s location on the Wall, their dates of birth and death, their hometown, branch of service and rank, and the location where they died. Between flashes of the portraits, “core values” linked to military service, such as “Respect,” “Loyalty,” “Courage,” “Duty,” “Honor,” and “Integrity,” would scroll across the wall.35 The language used to describe this section of the VVMEC is noteworthy when compared to the memorial wall. The incorporation of heroic values, “courage,” “duty,” etc., contrasts with the antiheroic and somber rhetoric of the memorial. “Wall of Faces” mimics the nickname for the VVM, “the Wall,” suggesting it is the memorial morphed into a new form, with faces on display. “Making the Names Visible” suggests a duplicative effect: the VVM made all names of US servicemembers killed visible by engraving them in reflective black granite on the National Mall. As Kirk Savage noted, it was the first and remains the only war memorial in Washington, DC, and in the country to incorporate every name of the US war dead.36 Yet the VVMEC “Wall” suggests the Fund apparently judged this to be inadequate commemoration. A name now required a face to create the appropriate impression. This emphasis on photographs of the dead brings up the question of what faces can do that names alone cannot. In the case of the VVM, the scale of over 58,200 names viewed together arguably achieves a greater and more sustained impact than a smaller sample of rotating portraits inside an education center. The effect of being overtaken by the names as the VVM’s walls rise to a height of 10 feet at their apex intensifies this experience. The names, listed nonhierarchically by date of death only, do not reveal socioeconomic status, ethnicity beyond surname, age, and, importantly at the VVM, military rank—often evident through age. Why, then, reproduce the Wall text in image, and why frame this doubled commemoration as education? Scruggs believed the photographs in the Center would make the memorial

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experience more “meaningful,” that visitors would be able to “understand these people were lost, and what great people they were” through their photographs and apparently through accompanying touchscreen-accessible information planned for the Center.37 However, the VVMEC’s presentation of, on average, over 150 faces per day would also likely generate an unintended outcome common to such photographic displays. As museum studies specialist Paul Williams wrote, “The end result [to put a ‘human face’ on tragedy] can be depersonalization, insofar as the person or people depicted are often received as little more than representative sacrificial victims of a historical narrative.”38 Although Scruggs cast the individual lived lives of the war dead as instructive, it is feasible they would have existed as mere statistics of lives cut short by military service. In July 2018, the VVMF sought Congressional approval to extend the authorization for construction of the VVMEC to 2022, a necessity as the Fund was still working to raise two thirds of the total cost to build it.39 Just over two months later, the VVMF announced that, following a “strategic review” of the project, and due to continued shortfalls in funding, it was “changing direction” to “focus on online resources, handheld technology, education staff, mobile exhibits and partnership to teach visitors about the Vietnam War and honor those whose names appear on the Memorial, and to terminate efforts to construct a physical building on the National Mall.”40 In November 2017, the Fund released the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Mobile Tour App as part of this effort. Following the VVMEC cancellation, the app offered a substantially scaled down version of what the Center would have provided. It contains a walking tour of the Wall, with an overview and nine separate stages serving as a supplement to the memorial supporting the Fund’s emphasis on military service and its revisionist perspective on the Vietnam War.41 Some of the stages feature stories about individuals named on the VVM. For example, “Missing in Action” describes one soldier named on the Wall as “destined to serve in the military from an early age.” “Medal of Honor” mythologizes a Navy chaplain killed while administering last rites and notes the man is in the process of canonization by the Roman Catholic Church. This maintains the VVMEC’s promise to “preserve the personal stories from the past to educate our future,” an emotional approach to war history separate from the VVM and focused on heroism and sacrifice rather than the facts of the conflict and the discourse around it.42 Another feature of the app is a searchable directory of the Wall and a function to “Scan a Name” onsite. Scanning a name on the Wall or clicking a name on the app directory takes the user to a page displaying information that the VVMEC’s “Wall of Faces” would have projected on its screen: a photograph of the person, dates of birth and death, hometown, and branch of service. Clicking a button reading “more” opens the VVMF website profile of the same person. This online version is part of the VVMF’s virtual “Wall of Faces,” which approximates on the internet what the VVMEC’s exhibition would have contained. As planned for the Center, the virtual “Wall of Faces” homepage opens with portraits of soldiers in a grid, displayed on their date of birth. Clicking a face takes the viewer to the same profile linked via the mobile app. In some cases, there are multiple photos for the profile, for example, additional

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portraits, family photographs, and the person’s tombstone. If an object in the VVMF collection referenced that person, a link reading “Associated items left at the Wall” results in at least one photograph of that object, accompanied by a full summary and description of the item. According to the VVMF, this feature serves visitors born after the VVM’s construction, a group presumed by the Fund to lack the ability to draw meaning from the memorial: “To them, the more than 58,000 names etched in black granite represent faceless patriots without historical context.”43 Brief videos and text accompany various sections of the app and frequently recall the “core values” of military service the Fund identified for inclusion in the Center. The section “Tet Offensive and Draft” indicates, “Only slightly more than 30 percent of the service members listed on The Wall were draftees, while nearly 70 percent volunteered.” The “Wall Facts” section tests app users on the content in these sections, with the opening question asking what percentage of US servicemembers volunteered for the Vietnam War, an implied attempt to confront the popular conception of the unwilling draftee sent to the war. (The answer is “a little more than 59 percent” volunteered.) As the VVMEC would have done, the mobile app promotes military duty and sacrifice as roles to be celebrated, in direct contrast to the VVM’s antiheroic strategy of memorialization. Similarly, though the app touches on the aesthetic of the VVM, it only notes the Fund’s criteria for its appearance when it opened the public competition to design the memorial; it states it is “nontraditional,” but not the reasons why it defied memorial traditions. This leaves out the various ways the VVM attests to the difficult history of the Vietnam War. Instead of seizing the opportunity to use the VVM as an illustration of war legacy in the United States, the mobile app in its present form locates meaning in personal photographs, stories, and objects that ultimately cannot speak to the breadth and complexity of the Vietnam War or the Wall. Although the physical Center’s cancellation will preserve the commemorative sphere of Maya Lin’s memorial wall, its virtual versions nevertheless represent a divergence from the VVM’s origins, constituting a supplemental text in images and objects that reframes the war and recontextualizes the Wall along celebratory military narratives. If the Fund continues to promote its app as the virtual education center it once sought to construct, a revision of its contents would present a possibility to sustain the VVM’s relevance for later generations of visitors along the lines of its origins. Sensitive interpretations of Maya Lin’s design and its pathbreaking commemorative strategy would enhance its impact for those unfamiliar with what came before and what came after. For example, the Korean War Veterans Memorial, which opened on the National Mall in 1995 and incorporates its own reflective black granite wall, is an obvious descendent of the VVM. Detailing why Scruggs and his fellow veterans sought recognition on the National Mall could illuminate the complicated place the Vietnam War holds in US war history. Explaining trends of donation for objects from the VVMF collection would illustrate the memorial’s legacy among shifting populations of visitors since 1982. Rather than celebrating war history or individual heroism, such approaches would preserve US commemoration of the Vietnam War as the Fund intended in 1980: as a tragedy that resulted in loss, to be contemplated in the presence of the names of those who fell in its service.

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Notes 1 The VVM was the most visited site on the National Mall between 1985 and 1999. Since then it has consistently been the second most visited site on the National Mall, after the Lincoln Memorial. In 1986, 5.3 million people visited the VVM; 3.9 million people visited the Lincoln Memorial that same year. In 2019, there were 4.5 million visitors to the VVM and 7.8 million visitors to the Lincoln Memorial. Visitation figures at the Lincoln Memorial are likely consistently higher in recent years due to that memorial’s basement visitor’s center and facilities, as well as its use as a site for concerts, political demonstrations, and commemorations. By contrast, the lawn surrounding the VVM is off-limits for recreational use. Reports of visitation are available at the National Parks Service Visitor Use Statistics website, accessed September 27, 2020, http://irma.nps.gov/Stats/. 2 It is important to note that there was never a declaration of war against communist forces in Vietnam by the US government. Nor was there a declaration of the war’s end in 1975. Although “conflict” is the more appropriate terminology, I will use “Vietnam War” throughout as that is how it is commonly known in the United States 3 Scruggs retired from the VVMF in February 2015 as president emeritus. See “Jan Scruggs Announces Retirement,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, February 27, 2015, accessed August 18, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20170703083500/http:// www.vvmf.org/news/article=Jan-Scruggs-Announces-Retirement. 4 See Jan C. Scruggs, The Wall That Heals (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 1992); Jan C. Scruggs, Why Vietnam Still Matters: The War and the Wall (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 1996); and Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Echoes from the Wall: History, Learning and Leadership through the Lens of the Vietnam War Era (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, 1999). The Fund authored Echoes from the Wall in collaboration with several educators, historians, and journalists. A full listing of contributors can be found in the foreword to the guide. The late historian Stanley Karnow is perhaps the most notable on the list, which includes a variety of secondary and university level educators, among others. Karnow’s Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983) is heavily cited throughout the text as source material for students to read prior to class discussion. 5 Legislation for the VVMEC was passed as Public Law 108–126, “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Visitor Center Authorization,” November 17, 2003, accessed July 14, 2019, http://www.congress.gov/108/plaws/publ126/PLAW-108publ126.pdf. 6 Scruggs, telephone conversation with author, New York, September 5, 2013. 7 Portions of the following section have been adapted from an earlier publication by the author, Favorite, “‘We Don’t Want Another Vietnam’: The Wall, the Mall, History, and Memory in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Education Center,” Public Art Dialogue 6, no. 2 (Fall 2016): 185–205. 8 The VVM design competition received 1,432 entries. Jury members were architect Paul D. Spreiregen (professional advisor to the jury), architect Pietro Belluschi, landscape architecture and urban development scholar Grady Clay, landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, sculptor Richard H. Hunt, sculptor Constantino Nivola, sculptor James Rosati, landscape architect Hideo Sasaki, and architect Harry Weese.

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For Spreiregen’s recollection of the competition, see Paul Spreiregen, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Competition,” Competitions, October 2017, accessed August 18, 2019, http://competitions.org/2017/10/the-vietnam-veterans-memorial-designcompetition-essay-by-paul-spreiregen. See, for example, Tom Carhart, “A Better Way to Honor Viet Vets,” Washington Post, November 15, 1981, accessed August 17, 2019, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ archive/opinions/1981/11/15/a-better-way-to-honor-viet-vets/e890b636-d633-46fbae72-e3e007699430/. Carhart was a VVMF member and Vietnam War veteran who denounced Lin’s design as a “black gash of shame and sorrow.” For discussion of the design controversy, including Carhart’s role in it, see Patrick Hagopian, The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 100–39; see also Daniel Abramson, “Maya Lin and the 1960s: Monuments, Time Lines, and Minimalism,” Critical Inquiry 22 (Summer 1996): 679–709. Maya Lin, quoted in Phil McCombs, “Maya Lin and the Great Call of China,” Washington Post, January 3, 1982, accessed August 17, 2019, http://www. washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/01/03/maya-lin-and-the-great-call-ofchina/544d8f2b-43b4-45ec-989b-72b2f2865eb4/. The three figures are of different ethnicities: Latino, white, and Black. For background on the effort to add the flagpole and figural sculpture at the memorial site, see Hagopian, 106, 114–28. On The Three Servicemen, also referred to as Three Soldiers and Three Fightingmen, see Karal Ann Marling and Robert Silberman, “The Statue near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 (Spring 1987): 4–29. Patrice Gaines-Carter, “Viet Memorial Fund Closes; $9.9 Million Raised for Vets’ Monument,” Washington Post, January 26, 1985, A10. Scruggs, quoted in Vietnam Magazine, “Interview—Jan C. Scruggs, President of Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund,” HistoryNet, December 7, 2009, accessed July 13, 2019, http://www.historynet.com/interview-with-jan-scruggs-vietnam-veteransmemorial-fund.htm. Presumably Scruggs was referring to a number of portable, smaller-scale reproductions of the VVM touring the United States that were not commissions of the Fund, along with commercial products such as T-shirts bearing an image of The Three Servicemen, the proceeds for which were not going toward the maintenance for or administration of the site on the National Mall. See Hagopian, 386–93 for details on the earliest traveling replica of the VVM, which was displayed in San Francisco in 1983, and on later replicas, including one sponsored by funeral and cemetery company Service Corporation International (SCI), which paid Scruggs a stipend for the privilege and for his appearance at their wall’s display events. The SCI-sponsored wall traveled as early as 1991, see Bob Henderson, “Vietnam Tributes Coming,” St. Petersburg Times, April 10, 1991, 1. The text of the plaque reads, “In memory of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice.” Jan C. Scruggs, quoted in “New Casualty Category at the Vietnam Memorial,” New York Times, July 5, 2000, accessed July 14, 2019, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/05/ us/new-casualty-category-at-the-vietnam-memorial.html.

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16 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Plans for Education Center to Be Revealed,” September 18, 2000, accessed July 14, 2019, http://web.archive.org/ web/20100304043720/http://www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?sectionID=180. 17 Scruggs, telephone conversation with author. 18 In his July 2001 testimony to the US Senate Subcommittee on National Parks, Scruggs stated, “The new Education Center will transform the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into a more profound learning experience for America’s youth with a self-guided tour and photographs of those who are on the wall, and these will engage them,” U.S. Senate Hearing 107–291, July 17, 2001, accessed July 14, 2019, http://www.gpo.gov/ fdsys/pkg/CHRG-107shrg76918/pdf/CHRG-107shrg76918.pdf. 19 D.C. Preservation League, “The Most Endangered Properties for 2003: DC World War I Memorial,” D.C. Preservation League, accessed August 17, 2019, http://web. archive.org/web/20091207044948/http://www.dcpreservation.org/endangered/2003/ warmemorial.html. 20 The US Department of Veterans Affairs calculated over 6 million veterans of the Vietnam era were living as of 2018; 8.8 million served in the military during the war. See US Department of Veterans Affairs, “National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics: Veteran Population,” accessed September 27, 2020, http://www.va.gov/ vetdata/veteran_population.asp. 21 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation, Design Program (Washington, DC: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, November 12, 1980), 17. 22 Charles L. Griswold, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Washington Mall: Philosophical Thoughts on Political Iconography,” in Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, eds. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 91. 23 Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 51. 24 Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 266. 25 US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Center Interpretive Plan (May 2011), open-file report (Harpers Ferry, 2011), 2. Additional criteria were “honor those who died and all who serve,” “tell the history of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” and “serve people of all ages and backgrounds.” 26 This quote appeared on the VVMF website on the VVMEC and in promotional videos, including “Education Center at the Wall Tour,” January 23, 2012, accessed July 13, 2019, http//web.archive.org/web/20120613000942/http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=GfIn4PK3G0s. 27 “Good wars” refers to conflicts in which the United States and its allies achieved a moral and military victory, with the Second World War being the prime example. In US history, the American Revolution is considered to be the first “good war.” 28 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, email message to author, May 16, 2016. 29 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, untitled and undated curatorial document, accessed June 28, 2013, US National Park Service Museum Resource Center, Landover, MD. 30 Anonymous VVMF Staff Member, interview by author, June 27, 2013, Landover, MD.

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31 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Veterans Announce National Design Competition for Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,” October 1, 1980. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 32 See Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Timeline of the Vietnam Era,” accessed July 14, 2019, http://www.vvmf.org/timeline/. 33 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Timeline of the Vietnam Era,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, accessed August 17, 2019, http://www.vvmf.org/timeline. 34 By January 2020, forty-five states in the United States supplied photos for all of their war dead from Vietnam, with only 300 photos remaining to be collected, see Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Fewer than 300 Photos Needed to Complete the Wall of Faces,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, accessed September 27, 2020, http://www.vvmf.org/News/Fewer-than-300-photos-needed-to-complete-The-Wallof-Faces/. 35 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “VVM Center Exhibits Unveiled,” May 22, 2007, accessed July 13, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20100304055609/http://www. vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=566. Media footage, oral histories, and letters home were also to be incorporated into the “Wall of Faces”; touchscreen panels adjacent to the display would provide the same information for all more than 58,200 names, see Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Behind Every Name,” The Education Center at the Wall, accessed July 13, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20100320232914/http:// www.buildthecenter.org/the-center/behind-every-name.html. Initially, a resource center planned for the exit area of the VVMEC was to have hosted this information on computer terminals. 36 Savage, 266. 37 Scruggs, telephone conversation with author. 38 Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Berg: Oxford and New York: 2007), 73. 39 US Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), an Iraq War veteran, introduced the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Visitor Center Extension Act in the Senate. Text of the bill is available at http://www.congress.gov/bill/115thcongress/senate-bill/3298/text, accessed July 13, 2019. Daines’ statement on the bill is available in Congressional Record, accessed July 13, 2019, http://www.congress.gov/ crec/2018/07/30/CREC-2018-07-30-pt1-PgS5457.pdf. 40 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Changes Direction of Education Center Campaign,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, September 21, 2018, accessed July 13, 2019, http://web.archive.org/ web/20181005120233/http://www.vvmf.org/news/article=Vietnam-VeteransMemorial-Fund-changes-direction-of-Education-Center-campaign. 41 Observations are based on the Android operating system version 5.1.2 of the mobile app “VVMF Mobile tour,” updated on March 1, 2019, and accessible as of July 14, 2019. The stages of the mobile tour are “Design and Layout” (of the Wall), “Missing in Action,” “Women and the Youngest,” “Medal of Honor,” “Tet Offensive and Draft,” and others on The Three Servicemen, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, the memorial plaque, and “Items Left at the Wall.” Although there are no specific statistics on the number of app users, the Google Play webpage for the app notes it has been installed over 5,000 times on Android devices, see “VVMF Mobile Tour,” accessed August 17,

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2019, http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inadev.ima.vvmf&hl=en_US. The number of installations on Apple devices was not available from the developer at the time of this writing. 42 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Build the Center, accessed July 13, 2019, http:// web.archive.org/web/20180903011822/http://buildthecenter.org/. This text is from a September 3, 2018 archive of the VVMF website. 43 Ibid.

12

“I Feel Like I Have Hated Lincoln for 110 Years”: Debates over the Lincoln Statue in Richmond, Virginia By Evie Terrono

On a sunny afternoon on April 5, 2003, at Tredegar Iron Works, the largest cannon producer for the Confederacy in downtown Richmond, the National Park Service (NPS) unveiled David Frech’s statue of Abraham Lincoln and His Son Tad (Figure 12.1).1 In commemoration of the president’s visit to the devastated city 138 years earlier, the United States Historical Society, the donor of the statue, intended to acknowledge his conciliatory stance toward the South and expand the ideological reach of the city’s monumental landscape, at a time when the NPS was redirecting its interpretative programs. To the progeny of those who defended the Confederacy however, this was deemed as a deliberate provocation to re-assert federal authority onto the southern landscape. Physically excluded from the unveiling, due to their insistence on displaying the Confederate flag, Neo-Confederate dissenters made their presence and their ideology palpable, heckling and booing officials during the ceremony. A large Confederate flag unfurled from a truck stationed on top of the hill where the statue is located, provided an obnoxious ideological antithesis to the pacifying tone of the ceremony. A plane flying overhead with a banner inscribed with the state’s motto “Sic Semper Tyrannis” (Thus Always to Tyrants) and in reference to its usage by John Wilkes Booth at Lincoln’s assassination expressed unequivocally the inimical politics of the statue’s detractors.2 The reaction to this statue exposed the vexed polarizations over the understanding of the Civil War and its memorial inscriptions in public spaces, particularly in the South.3 As Matthew Barbee noted, in “the 1990s, Richmond’s temporal disputes were defined by tensions between celebrating the Civil War and the civil rights movement, all of which occurred through neoliberal multiculturalism.”4 These continued unabated, and even escalated in the early twenty-first century, and they frame the discourse around the statue. I argue that this debate provides a “teachable moment,” not only about the historical shifts in the estimation of Lincoln, situated within the broader context of undermining actors of the Civil War, but also as an important flashpoint for

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Figure 12.1  David Frech, Abraham Lincoln and His Son Tad, Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia, 2003. Photograph by author.

the historical and ongoing negotiation of spatial politics in the city of Richmond and the competing claims of opposing constituents over public spaces.

The Unveiling and the Rhetorical Framing of the Statue At the unveiling ceremony, Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer praised the statue for its “powerful simplicity and subtle power, the raw human emotions, a man of the people among the people.” Affirming the subjectivity of historical assessment, Ronald C. White, another Lincoln scholar, noted that “memory always partakes of the points at which you and I view the past.”5 In her concluding remarks, Cynthia MacLeod, superintendent of the Richmond National Battlefield Park, acknowledged the responsibility of the NPS to “expand the telling of the stories of the Civil War … as springboards for personal and intellectual enrichment and of understanding the struggles in our nation’s history.”6 She accepted the donation in “the spirit of binding the nation’s wounds.” Many recognized that although the statue exposed yet again the “weight of contentious, unresolved history,” it also provided pathways for national reckoning, with “expectation and some hope of instruction.”7 Throughout the ceremony, however, Neo-Confederate ideologues contested the dominant conciliatory message persistently and loudly.

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Iconographic Meanings The bronze statue depicts Lincoln and Tad seated on a low bench; Lincoln is embracing his son firmly.8 Whereas Tad leans inquisitively toward his father, Lincoln, haggard and burdened by personal and political anxieties, does not return the gaze. On Lincoln’s left side there is a folded copy of the Richmond Whig, marking his visit to the city.9 Initially, in order to reinforce the pacifying message of the statue, the patrons wished to include a young woman approaching the president offering a bouquet of flowers, but ultimately the detail was eliminated.10 This iconographic departure from the more explicitly political interpretations of Lincoln encourages accessibility, and underscores the statue’s powerful rhetorical potential, as Lincoln contemplates the human toll of the conflict and the precariousness of the national destiny at the end of the war. Moreover, it reinforces the idea of Lincoln as a benevolent father who in his second inaugural withheld malice and extended charity to those who endured battle, and care for the war’s widows and orphans.11 References to father Abraham were common and the paternal identity of Lincoln was of particular relevance for African Americans since the nineteenth century. As thousands responded to Lincoln’s call for volunteers in 1862, “Father Abraham” was forever immortalized in James Gibbon’s poem, subsequently set to music “We are coming, Father Abraham, Three Hundred Thousand More.” Allusions to the biblical Abraham strengthened the identity of the president as the father of a new nation born of the carnage of the Civil War, and in pictorial interpretations, particularly in prints, Lincoln was often paired with Washington, the Father of the Nation.12 The curved parapet behind Lincoln and Tad, inscribed with the words to “Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds,” reinforces the hope for national reunification and conciliation. Even those committed to the didactic potential of the statue, however, suggested that it was neither novel, nor instructive in facilitating the understanding of the significance of Lincoln’s visit to the devastated South or to emancipated slaves, since Lincoln did not go to the Tredegar Iron Works during his time in the city.13 Lincoln scholar Gabor Boritt remarked that he would have preferred a statue that acknowledged Lincoln’s humility when, during his visit, “an old Black man, a freed slave, stopped before Lincoln and lifted his hat in deference to the president.” In response, Lincoln “wordlessly doffed his stovepipe hat in deference to the old man.”14 This gesture according to Charles Coffin, the reporter for the Boston Journal who experienced it, was a “death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste.”15

Lincoln’s Visit to Richmond On April 4, 1865, Lincoln came to Richmond, eliciting according to historian James McPherson “the most unforgettable scenes of this unforgettable war.”16 African Americans came out to greet him in almost messianic exultation.17 Contemporary illustrations reveal the mixture of curiosity and gratitude that African Americans expressed toward the president, as evidenced in Lambert Hollis’ Lincoln in Richmond drawing.18 Noting

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the disregard of most white residents, the New York Daily Tribune reported that the “enthusiasm was, however, confined to the negroes, the foreigners, and exceptional Virginia-born citizens.”19 In Joseph Becker’s drawing of the event, engraved for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Blacks and whites, among them a group of Irishmen, seen distinctly on the left, greet Lincoln with demonstrable exuberance.20 A young woman rushes toward the president with a bouquet of flowers, and this most likely was the inspiration for the initial drawing of the statue.21 According to Coffin, African Americans crowded around the president, and when Coffin related to an African American woman in the vicinity, “There is the man who made you free,” what followed rendered legible the “delirium of joy” of the city’s Black population. “The men threw up their hats, the women waved their bonnets and handkerchiefs, clapped their hands, and sang, ‘Glory to God! glory! glory! glory!’”22 Commenting on the almost apparitional impact of Lincoln’s visit among African Americans, Coffin asserted that they were “drunk with ecstasy … They would gladly have prostrated themselves before him—allowed him to walk on their bodies—if by doing so they could have expressed their joy.”23

Messaging Historical accounts that Lincoln did not go to Richmond “for the sake of any petty triumph” but rather with humility and compassion provided the ideological framing for the statue’s reception in 2003.24 The day prior to Lincoln’s visit, Confederate soldiers ceded the city to Union forces and set tobacco warehouses on fire that spread and engulfed the commercial center leaving it in ruin. In a fundraising letter, Martin Moran, president of the United States Historical Society, remarked that “Lincoln did not come to Richmond as a conqueror; he grieved over what he saw. He came as a healer, a unifier, a father—a man for all the people.”25 Holzer, in the pamphlet accompanying the letter, highlighted the instructive value of the experience for twelve-year-old Tad, the day of the visit was his birthday, as Lincoln showed no “thought of revenge or feeling of bitterness toward the vanquished.”26 Robert Kline, the chairman of the United States Historical Society, for his part, referenced the ideological relevance of the statue for Americans then engaged in a protracted, costly, divisive and controversial war in Iraq. He expressed his hope that the statue would alleviate the wounds of the past and be a paradigm and a warning for the future: “We think this will be a great symbol for the whole nation at a time when we need symbols of peace … it will reach out for us to obtain peace whenever we can and avoid war whenever we can.”27 But, the toppling in April of 2003 of the statue of Saddam Hussein by American troops in Iraq exposed for African Americans the irony of the maintenance of statues of Confederate actors who, according to one account, had perpetuated atrocities comparable to those of the foreign dictator.28 Defending the acceptance of the statue, David Ruth, assistant superintendent of the Richmond National Battlefield Park remarked that the NPS did not intend “to incite any group,” but strove to present a “more holistic story.”29 Others saw it as an opportunity to “symbolically turn the city’s attention to the future and away from the past.”30

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The Reception and Reaction In promoting Lincoln as a unifier and conciliationist, patrons hoped to stave off oppositional responses to the statue; the public’s reaction, however, was swift, voluminous, and largely adversarial. Hundreds of letters poured into the Richmond Times Dispatch immediately following the announcement of the statue in August of 2002. Ron Holland, of the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, mobilized his supporters to “Flood the Wires,” and write to all Virginia newspapers and political representatives.31 The contest extended well beyond the city of Richmond and multiple exchanges were recorded in national, and even international newspapers.32 The online petition “We Say No to the Proposed Lincoln Statue in Richmond” garnered more than 3000 signatures, with often venomous and even threatening commentary.33 Usage of the diminutive “abe” and the derogatory “ape” appeared in the comments. Brag Bowling, commander of the Virginia Division, Sons of the Confederate Veterans, led and sustained the campaign against the statue, noting that “it is an unnecessary slight to our state with a not-so-subtle reminder of who won the war and who will dictate our monuments, history, heroes, education and culture, no matter how it affects Virginia or any other Southern state.”34 Correspondents castigated the undertaking as a “slap to the face of the South,” and proposed rhetorical similes of the impropriety of the statue to placing Hitler in Berlin, Osama Bin Laden in New York City, Sherman in Atlanta, or Benedict Arnold next to the Washington Monument. Repeatedly, they challenged the location as historically inaccurate and contested the possibility that this would “bind up the nation’s wounds.” One writer, the offspring of ancestors who witnessed the burning of Richmond, questioned the patrons’ motivations and whether they were “really trying to educate or agitate”?35 Countering the official emphasis on Lincoln’s selfeffacing visit, another correspondent noted that “commemorating the hubristic visit of Lincoln—an act of obvious self-gratification and gloating, masked by the latter-day gloss of lofty sentiments—by putting a statue of him at the political and industrial heart of the Confederacy would be as inappropriate as placing one of King William III in Dublin.”36 Increasingly, commentators derided the undertaking as propagandistic, and they called on the NPS to present an impartial view of history. Accusations of historical revisionism and political correctness dominated the exchanges in the Richmond Times Dispatch. Dissenters collapsed diachronic political, economic, and cultural grievances against governmental overreach from the Civil War, through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era, and into the present.37 Accusations of myth-making were hurled across contenders. One writer noted that “while our educational system has certainly worked tirelessly to make Lincoln into a god-like figure in American history, the citizens of these states have heard the stories of our great-grandfathers and would rather not perpetuate the myth that is ‘the Great Emancipator.’”38 Lost Cause apologists came out in force to demonize Lincoln and reason that “many African-americans [sic] and their white neighbors toiled to produce arms to defend THEIR [sic] country with. Discord is a product of hell. Those who have proposed placing a statue of Lincoln at Tredegar are

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surely sowing its seeds.”39 Conceding a solution to the commemorative conundrum, a petitioner proposed that “if such a statue is to be erected, it should show Lincoln on his knees weeping over a shredded copy of the Constitution, and it should contain a marker reading, ‘I was wrong.’”40 Whereas ongoing provocations on the southern commemorative geography beginning in 2017 have exposed the often subjective, extremist, and historically flawed claims of southern heritage advocates, those who activated the opposition in 2003 buttressed their arguments upon contemporary scholarship which exposed the instability of Lincoln’s political legacy.41 They often referenced Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln (2002), regarding Lincoln’s ambivalence toward racial equality, his trepidation toward emancipation, and his violation of constitutional rights, particularly the habeas corpus.42 As one correspondent asserted: [DiLorenzo] thoroughly demythologizes Lincoln and his legacy for the edification of those benighted individuals ignorant enough to venerate him. Then perhaps you would understand why such a statue would be properly viewed as a symbol of reconciliation only in the perverse sense of imposition of an intellectually phlogistic monument that is utterly unwarranted, undesirable and unfitting.43

Neo-Confederates also commandeered Lerone Bennett Jr.’s Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (1999), which sustained Neo-Confederate claims that Lincoln was an oppressor and not the “Great Emancipator.”44 From Walt Whitman’s martyrial ode to the slain president in “O Captain, My Captain,” and continuing in the early twentieth century, the persistent hagiography of Lincoln prompted H. L. Mencken to observe that he “becomes the American solar myth, the chief butt of American credulity and sentimentality … a plaster saint fit for adoration,” and as this protracted confrontation revealed, the target of public ire and opprobrium, nothing particularly new in the South.45 In their indictment of Lincoln, Neo-Confederate opponents of the statue foregrounded their own understanding of the complicated ideological heritage of the Civil War.46 African Americans, however, sought to redirect the debate away from the values and faults of Lincoln proper, and force the city’s accountability over its politically and racially fraught public spaces.

African American Responses Kline originally wished to have the statue placed on Monument Avenue but abandoned the idea due to the complicated land ownership jurisdiction on Monument Avenue that would have involved negotiations with the city of Richmond.47 The potential didactic implications that the proposed location would have on the most significant and most contested sites to Confederate actors cannot be underestimated; if the monuments to Robert E. Lee (1890), J.E.B. Stuart (1907), Jefferson Davis (1907) and Stonewall Jackson (1919) lionized the irreparable divisions in the American fabric, Lincoln’s

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statue, particularly in his paternal manner, held the possibility not only to interrogate their supervisory authority in their portrayal as heroic, seemingly unperturbed by the devastating outcome of the conflict, but also to seek compromise and address enduring exclusions. Despite this unrealized rhetorical interaction and the geographic distance between Monument Avenue and the statue’s current location, many commentators, particularly African Americans, pronounced it as a long-overdue iconographic and ideological counterpoint to the oppressive political narrative of the avenue, and one that could initiate commemorative contestations to the city’s civic landscape.48 Advancing this prospect, Vice Mayor Delores L. McQuinn asserted provocatively: “Lincoln is just the beginning. For those of you who don’t think other statues should be here except for the Confederacy, then you haven’t seen anything yet. I am going to go out of my way to try and diversify the statues.”49 Neverett Eggleston III, whose family have been business owners since the 1920s in Jackson Ward, the city’s predominantly African American neighborhood, called for more statues to African Americans, noting “little kids look up and see Lee everywhere … They should have an opportunity to look up and see our heroes too.”50 Referencing the demographics of the city of Richmond at the time—of which 58 percent of the population was African American, many among them descendants of enslaved peoples—a supporter proposed that the statue would “provide testimony to the significance of emancipation in their lives.”51 Forecasting the arguments against the preservation of statues of Confederate actors in the wake of protests at Charlottesville in 2017, another commentator noted: Why are we still lamenting a loss for 138 years? Why do we pretend we won the Civil War by honoring the losers as if they won? It bothers me, too, as an African American woman that some white Southerners wished the Confederacy had won the war. What that would have meant for me is that my people would have remained in slavery. Should I be reminded of that when I am on Monument Avenue?52

Exploring sentiments of shared discontent with the statue’s critics, but on diametrically opposed ideological grounds, Michael P. Williams, a Black journalist confessed, “I understand resentment, grievance and lingering hurt. But I wonder if any of these people have ever pondered how the descendants of slaves feel driving down Monument Avenue amid towering monuments to people who—bottom line—fought to preserve slavery.” Despite this perspective, Williams declared his opposition to the removal of the Confederate actors from Monument Avenue because “they played an undeniable and pivotal role in a tragic history we’re still struggling to overcome. Can we say no less about Abraham Lincoln? History is often painful, bitter and contentious, with winners and losers and—we can only hope—realization and reconciliation.”53 Richmond Free Press, the city’s African American newspaper applauded having a statue of Lincoln “who won the war to keep the Union intact and remove the blight of slavery,” in a “city still unbelievably saturated with Confederate statues.”54 Even some among those who claimed Confederate heritage voiced support for the statue, exposing the complexity of the memory of the Civil War and its impact

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among southerners. Referencing her ancestor’s service in the Confederate army a correspondent observed that he was neither a policy-maker nor a decision-maker, just a soldier … When he returned from war, he nailed a picture of President Lincoln above the mantle and never explained why. He spent the rest of his life trying to feed his family in the depressed economy of Southern Virginia. If a foot soldier who experienced the atrocities and deprivation of war could accept its outcome, why can’t we?55

Contesting/Complementing the Commemorative Landscape In a climate of escalating assaults against Confederate symbols, and amid calls to rename buildings on university campuses and remove Confederate statues from NPS sites, the conflict over Lincoln added to the complexity of unsettled outrages.56 NeoConfederates beholden to southern heritage and ancestral memory felt assaulted by commemorative changes as holidays, including Confederate History Month, were revised and memorials were challenged.57 Southern apologists, concerned over their cultural marginalization, deemed the involvement of the NPS as federal overreach and an encroachment on States’ rights; they even identified the NAACP as complicit in the scheme. “Remove our monuments, change our mascots, take down our flags, and put a statue of Lincoln in Richmond. Reconstruction isn’t over. So, we’ll keep fighting to defend our history and honor,” remarked one commentator.58 Advocates of representational pluralism, however, who sought to actualize a progressive cultural agenda, saw the persistence of Confederate memorialization as a mark of provincialism and unwillingness to negotiate peacefully the city’s past for the sake of its present and future. Many committed to rescuing Richmond from lingering inequities and addressing racial divisions and “the pathologies of violent crime and poverty” considered this controversy as an opportunity to rectify economic and racial disfranchisement and pave the ground for the city’s “better future.”59 The struggles over the sculpture questioned the ideological sovereignty of regressive, yet still dominant historical narratives over much disputed political territory and its projections on the commemorative landscape.60 The debates brought to the forefront reevaluations of the ideological currency of the heroic positioning of the actors of the Civil War against a desire for racial progress and the privileged placement in the urban landscape of alternative figures that represented heretofore unacknowledged histories. Animosities regarding the installation of the statue of Arthur Ashe on Monument Avenue dominated the mid-1990s and revealed the frustrating realities over cultural hegemony on the city’s most visible and most politicized memorial landscape.61 By the end of the decade, competing voices converged yet again on the revitalized Canal Walk on the James River over a mural of Robert E. Lee, part of an urban renewal scheme through the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation.62 As with its predecessors and its successors, this debate over

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the Lincoln statue conceded the political visibility and authority of Black leadership and its stewardship over the ideological vestiges of the Civil War on the urban landscape, at a time when the city sought to forge an inclusive cultural identity.63 The convergence of many institutional voices at the Tredegar Iron Works site, including the NPS and the American Civil War Center, endorsed not only the centrality of Civil War memory to the city’s heritage, but also a commitment to problematizing its interpretation, and affecting representational balance in public spaces.64

On the Pathway to a Multifaceted Interpretation In response to a congressional prompt in 2000, the NPS undertook a systemic and systematic assessment of its presentation strategies, consulted with historians of the Civil War era, and organized conferences exploring diversity and inclusivity in its objectives and didactic programming. Calling attention to the outmoded perspectives of its exhibits, most of which dated to the 1960s and 1970s and some even to the 1930s, the NPS undertook a restructuring of its interpretations with the purpose of “providing visitors to Civil War sites with a better understanding of the economic, political, and social context of the period.”65 It also affirmed its mandate according to the 1935 Historic Sites Act, to “present to the American public a history that promotes an understanding of the complexity of historical causation, the perils of historical stereotypes, and the relationship between past events and contemporary conditions.”66 Highlighting the contentiousness of ongoing confrontations over Civil War memory, the NPS acknowledged that “History does not possess only one truth, but many truths—and we contribute to the public’s knowledge about history … by presenting a past with multiple voices, multiple views and differing, even conflicting interpretations.”67 Recognizing the impossibility of a dispassionate discourse on the Civil War, it redirected its programs to “explore ‘the character’ of the war in a manner that interweaves cause, course, and consequence for the education and inspiration of the visiting public while fostering an intellectual environment that encourages the broadest discussion of the issues.”68 Reinforcing concerted communal efforts for a pluralist narrative in 2002, in his report to the Richmond City Council, H. Alexander Wise, president of the National Civil War Center Foundation, suggested that the proposed American Civil War Center, that was to be located at Tredegar Iron Works, would convey the story of the Civil War from three different perspectives: “the preservation of the Union, the Confederate fight for home and nationhood, and the African-American struggle for freedom.”69 In April of 2005, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the American Civil War Center, the emphasis was on accountability and the multiplicity of voices in conveying the causes, outcomes, and long-term impact of the war. Delegate Viola Baskerville expressed her reservations “because the Civil War is such a contested terrain. It has been the source of such division for so long in our city that I said ‘here we go again.’”70 A month later, at the Tredegar Iron Works, Allen Guelzo, accepting the Lincoln Prize, for his study Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2005), reiterated

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that “Lincoln wanted southerners to acknowledge that, more than being Southerners, they were Americans. Romantic sectional loyalties were great things to sip mint juleps over, but at the end of the day, Virginians had more in stake in being Americans than they did in being Virginians.”71 At the conclusion of the event, Wise affirmed that “the evening demonstrated the power of acknowledging everyone’s Civil War heritage— Confederate, African American, and Union alike. The American Civil War Center … is being built on the same principle of telling everyone’s story.”72

Historical Reevaluations and the Civic Landscape In his discussion of the Lincoln and Tad statue controversy, sociologist Barry Schwartz suggested that the “sentiment” of the opponents “must be questioned when its intensity diminishes abruptly … Denunciations of Lincoln’s image stopped suddenly because they were generated in part by the ritual itself.” The “participants,” said Schwartz, “dispersed, not to be heard from again.”73 Whereas I would agree that indictments against Lincoln and this particular statue were transient, initiatives to commemorative counter-narratives indicated the confrontational tenacity of Neo-Confederates. In the immediate aftermath, they activated their base toward the realization of a similarly paternal statue of Jefferson Davis by Cary Casteel to be donated to the American Civil War Center, honoring the bicentennial of Davis’ birth in 2008.74 The proposed statue, conceived explicitly as a “counterbalance” to the statue of Lincoln and Tad, depicted Davis with his son Joseph and Jim Limber, the African American boy cared for by the Davis family.75 The insistence, however, of the American Civil War Center that it would only accept the statue without any stipulations as to its display derailed the plans; though realized, the statue was never installed in Richmond.76 The debate over Lincoln and Tad was situated in an expansive racialized heritage rhetoric that has escalated rather than subsided in recent years, culminating in the devastating conflicts in Charlottesville in 2017. Neo-Confederates were able to capitalize on mass technologies of communication that quickly galvanized disparate elements of discontent into a focused opposition against not only the patrons of the monument, but also the federal government, and the academic community that had to acknowledge and engage with the criticisms. As historian John Barr has noted, “Lincoln’s enemies were part of a broader movement, a neo-Confederate movement, defined by its antagonism towards modernity, equality, democracy and the secularization of American society.”77 Opponents not only took umbrage with “revisionist” historians who focused on slavery as the motivating factor for southern secession, but also aired concerns over a variety of contemporary issues, including “changing demographics resulting from immigration, [and] the increased emphasis on multiculturalism and diversity in American life.”78 Cultural consumers are active agents of historical meaning and project onto symbolic sites their beliefs, dependent on varying degrees of objective, scholarly reasoning, or subjective, emotional interpretation.79 In preparation for the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial Commemoration, Congress emphasized “Emancipationist Lincoln” who

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was committed to racial egalitarianism, and who suffered a martyr’s death, but whose “life is a model for accomplishing the ‘American Dream’ through honesty, integrity, loyalty and a lifetime of education.”80 Given, however, the ongoing interrogations of figures of American exceptionality, what is the currency of Lincoln and Tad as a “teachable monument”?

The Didactic Potential Despite its brevity, the strife is integral to a broad and still ongoing reassessment of institutional commitment to historical truth telling. It is evident from the observations of patrons, historians, and the NPS, that they recognized the statue’s potential to enrich and complicate the understanding of the Civil War and its aftermath. African Americans argued that the installation of the statue as the corrective response to the Confederate “pantheon” on Monument Avenue provided a revisionist context for the city’s symbolic landscape. The debates foregrounded the function of monuments not merely as aesthetic experiences, but as powerful, propagandistic, political markers. Although Lincoln never visited Tredegar Iron Works, the statue provides interpretative opportunities in relation to the historical significance of the site. The thousands of canons and the massive amounts of munition produced at Tredegar wrought the carnage of the Civil War and caused the devastating loss of lives on both sides of the conflict. The enslaved laborers who worked at Tredegar ironically sustained a war that sought both to perpetuate their enslavement and to realize their freedom. Emancipated African Americans continued to work on the site in the post-bellum period that saw not only the realization of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, but also increasing limitations on their political and social agency at the conclusion of Reconstruction. The interpretative wayside by the American Civil War Museum presently on the site provides details as to Lincoln’s visit and highlights his enthusiastic reception among African Americans and the “stony silence” of most of the white population. Then, it reiterates Charles Coffin’s statement that Lincoln wished to see the South rebuilt; it also poses the rhetorical premise that alerts visitors to contemplate what Reconstruction might have looked like had Lincoln lived. The didactic potential of the statue, however, in tandem with the other institutional and commemorative narratives in its periphery, remains largely unrealized. Currently, neither the NPS that owns the statue nor the American Civil War Museum incorporate it intentionally in their educational agendas, leaving visitors on their own to devise and understand the potential connections to the educational objectives of either institution, and, to the broader memorialization of the conflict, its prelude and its aftermath in the city’s civic spaces.81 The statue, situated on a hilly plateau above the Richmond National Battlefield Park Visitor Center, is largely hidden to visitors who approach the Historic Tredegar campus through the main entrance to the site at the lower level; it is obscured by the gun foundry and an access elevator, and the mass of the American Civil War Museum.82 Patrons who enter the American Civil War Museum

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from its northwest entry on the second floor, if attentive and aware, potentially engage with both the message of Lincoln’s visit and the rhetorical implications of the Museum’s exhibits.83 From that entry point into the Museum, visitors are confronted with large, angular, pictorial, and textual panels that encapsulate the complexities of the conflict and provide immediate context for the exhibition, A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America. A didactic panel titled “1860: America Torn Asunder” introduces the threat that slavery posed to the American democratic experiment. Images of Black labor, slave auctions, and enslaved peoples compete for attention in a historical tableau of contradictory perspectives that include images of Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jefferson Davis, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Sojourner Truth, among others. With increasing attention across many cities to the integration of waterfront districts with public history initiatives, the area around Tredegar Iron Works provides remarkable possibilities for deliberate, multifaceted, programmatic integration of Richmond’s contested memorializing landscape that can yield educational benefits.84 The addition and prospective realization of a number of monuments that account for not only the ills of slavery but also ills of emancipation and reconciliation may come to bear significant lessons to understand the complicated memorializations of the Civil War and the still largely unacknowledged African American experience in Richmond.85 Conceived to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, but delayed for many years, Thomas J. Warren’s The Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom Monument was slated to be unveiled in the spring of 2020.86 Featuring a freed African American man who has broken his chains, although his back reveals the violence of his bondage, and a young woman, still in the garb of her enslavement who is holding her small infant while raising in her hand the Emancipation Proclamation, the statue will make visible the trauma of slavery and the promise of emancipation. The physical and ideological proximity of Lincoln and Tad and The Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom Monument that will be located on Brown’s island, and easily accessible by footbridge from Historic Tredegar, would thus allow for a meaningful interpolation of the monuments’ complementarity.87

Conclusion At the unveiling of the Lincoln statue, a young protester encapsulated the profound acrimony that he nurtured, stating “I am only 10 years old, but I already feel like I’ve hated Abraham Lincoln for 110 years.”88 Charles H. Cooley’s statement that “the imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society” is particularly applicable in this case.89 In 2009, the Virginia General Assembly issued a joint resolution confirming its commitment to commemorating the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth; in referencing Lincoln’s 1861 statement to Congress that the “struggle of today is not altogether for today—it is for a vast future also,” the bill proclaimed Lincoln’s “understanding, predicting, and warning future generations that the reverberations of the Civil War and the struggle for human rights would persist well

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into our own time.”90 The conflict over the Lincoln statue was as much about the perceived historical incompatibility of its placement at Tredegar Iron Works, as it was about competing interpretations of the political ideologies and the legacy of Lincoln. Dominant in the debates were conflicting claims over the city’s public spaces and the messages that they engender. In buttressing their arguments for, or against, the statue, its sponsors and its detractors employed particularized narratives that defended their understanding of Lincoln and his continued relevance in the contemporary context. In the end, it became entirely evident that despite the negotiations over historical fact, the debate over the statue and its comparable reverberations in our own time reveals the fallacies of the hopeful enunciation for reconciliation over the history and the fraught and often partisan memory of the Civil War. The incontrovertible ideological contests also underscored the inefficacy of the statue, and its attendant narratives, in making tangible and effective the moral didactic purposes for which it was conceived. Nonetheless, much can be achieved once the statue is integrated effectively within broader narratives dealing with past and ongoing interrogations of the problematics of racial justice in the city’s commemorative sites and in its historical accounting. Only when the city embraces an intentional and multilayered engagement with the unresolved narratives of the experiences of the enslaved and the historical and current tolls of the Civil War and their inscriptions on the commemorative landscape, can it begin to realize Lincoln’s testament to “Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds.”

Notes 1

2

For the significance of the Tredegar Iron Works, the South’s major iron manufacturing company and its enslaved laborers in the antebellum period and during the Civil War, see Gregg D. Kimball, American City, Southern Place (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 159–82. My thanks to Ethan Bullard, Museum Curator, Richmond National Battlefield Park and Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site, for making available to me the archival sources on the monument, and to Cynthia MacLeod and David Ruth for sharing their insights into the monument at the time of its creation. I extend my appreciation to John Coski, Historian at the American Civil War Museum, who generously shared resources and offered most useful perspectives in the formative stages of this article and commented on an earlier draft. The statue and the controversy are discussed briefly in a number of studies, but with little meaningful analysis of the cultural debates over the memory and commemoration of the Civil War, and concurrent efforts to reshape the cultural outlook of the city. See, Andrew Ferguson, Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 1–37; and Marie Tyler-McGraw, “Southern Comfort Levels: Race, Heritage Tourism and the Civil War in Richmond,” in Slavery and Public History: The Tough Side of American Memory, eds. James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 151–68. My thanks to Rachel Stephens for bringing this last source to my attention. Also, Marc H. Ross, Cultural Contestation in Ethnic Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 280–311; and John M. Barr, Loathing Lincoln: An American Tradition from the Civil War to the Present (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

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University Press, 2014), 259–330. Lastly, Adam Dean, “Lincoln in Richmond: A Tale of the First Lincoln Statue in the South,” (Honor’s Thesis, Department of History, University of California, 2005). My thanks to Dean for sharing his thesis with me. 3 For an excellent short read on the competing, often contradictory interpretations of the Civil War, see Kirk Savage, “War/Memory/History: Towards a Remixed Understanding,” in Remixing the Civil War: Meditations on the Sesquicentennial, ed. Thomas Brown (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 180–8. The literature on the complexities of remembering and memorializing the war is ever expanding, see Kirk Savage, ed. Civil War in Art and Memory, in the National Gallery of Art Studies in the History of Art (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2016); Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Conciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013); and Robert J. Cook, Civil War Memories: Contesting the Past in the United States since 1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). 4 Matthew M. Barbee, Race and Masculinity in Southern Memory (Lanham, CO: Lexington Books, 2014), 153. 5 For all citations from the ceremony, see “Dedication of Statue of Abraham Lincoln,” C-Span, April 5, 2003, accessed March 20, 2019, https://www.c-span.org/ video/?176035-1/dedication-statue-abraham-lincoln. Harold Holzer served on the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation from 2010 to 2016. See also Ronald C. White, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002). For the comments of other presenters at the unveiling, see “In Richmond, Lincoln Statue Is Greeted by Protests,” New York Times, April 6, 2003, A 26. 6 “Dedication of Statue of Abraham Lincoln.” 7 Michael P. Williams, “Can Statue Bind Up Wounds,” Richmond Times Dispatch, April 7, 2003, B1. 8 The statue underwent a number of modifications; initially Tad was shown standing casually to the right of his father in a pose that was reminiscent of the photographic portrait by Alexander Gardner, see https://www.loc.gov/resource/lprbscsm. scsm0777/, accessed May 28, 2019. Other photographic depictions of Lincoln and Tad are those by G. Gambert and Anthony Berger, see https://www.loc.gov/item/ scsm000403/, accessed May 28, 2019, https://www.loc.gov/item/2009630681/, accessed May 28, 2019. 9 Cynthia MacLeod insisted that the statue was an “interpretive piece,” rather than a memorial, see Cynthia MacLeod, Letter to Mike Adlerstein/Boston/NPS in Email Correspondence Proposed Lincoln Statue 2002–2003 RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy Box 1 of 3. Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records, Superintendent’s Files. 10 David Frech related to me that the patrons had firm ideas as to the final iconography of the statue; although he consulted photographs of Lincoln and Tad, he was not aware of other paternal depictions of Lincoln. In its proximity to the ground, the statue recalls Gutzon Borglum’s 1911 Lincoln at the Essex County Court House in Newark, New Jersey, although in that Lincoln is depicted alone; the statue is illustrated in Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1918), 323. Fred and Mabel Torey created the earliest statue of Lincoln and Tad at the Iowa State Capitol Grounds in Des Moines in 1961, see https://dsmpublicartfoundation.org/public-artwork/lincoln-and-tad/,

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accessed April 24, 2019. Lorenzo E. Ghiglieri’s statue of Lincoln and Tad unveiled in 1986 in front of the City Hall in Kansas City shows the president reading the Bible while a diminutive Tad strives to attract his attention. Charles Keck’s Lincoln and Boy, unveiled on February 12, 1949 at the Abraham Lincoln Houses in East Harlem, shows a paternal Lincoln seated with a young Black boy in front of him, see “Lincoln Statue Tribute to Harlem Slum Clearance,” Baltimore African American, February 19, 1949, 2. Transcript of President Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865), accessed September 16, 2019, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=38&p age=transcript. Richard Striner, Father Abraham. Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3. Kline had originally proposed a statue pairing Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, but the NPS rejected this idea as historically inaccurate. I am indebted to Cynthia MacLeod for this information. Frank James, “Confederacy’s Capital Rebels against Statue,” Chicago Tribune, March 6, 2003, 1–10. For historical reevaluations of Lincoln see, Gabor S. Boritt, ed. The Historian’s Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988). Cited in Michael Gorman, “A Conqueror or a Peacemaker? Abraham Lincoln in Richmond,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 123, no. 1 (2015): 31. Also, see Richard Wightman Fox, “‘A Death-shock to Chivalry, and a Mortal Wound to Caste’: The Story of Tad and Abraham Lincoln in Richmond,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 33, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 1–19. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom. The Civil War Era (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 846. I thank Cynthia MacLeod for this reference. For a detailed account of Lincoln’s impromptu itinerary through the city, see Gorman, 23–35. For the drawing in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, see https://npg. si.edu/blog/war%E2%80%99s-end-abraham-lincoln-april-1865, accessed May 28, 2019. “Richmond. A Diary of Events to Thursday,” New York Daily Tribune, April 8, 1865, 1, accessed April 9, 2019, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1865-0408/ed-1/seq-1/#. For the illustration in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, see http://rmc.library. cornell.edu/thirteenth/exhibition/legacy/index.html, accessed May 28, 2019. For this account, see Admiral [David Dixon] Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton, 1886), 300. Porter cited benign responses on the part of white Richmonders, contradicting other reports in contemporary newspapers, ibid. The veracity of Porter’s accounts has been debated, see Fox, note 11. For a contemporary African American account of Lincoln’s visit and the reaction of the city’s Black population, see “The President in Richmond,” The Liberator, April 28, 1865, 66, accessed October 1, 2019, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/ jala/2629860.0033.203/–death-shock-to-chivalry-and-a-mortal-wound-to-caste?rgn= main;view=fulltext#N1. Charles Coffin, “Scenes in Richmond,” Boston Journal, April 10, 1865, 4, cited in Gorman, 25. For another autoptic account of messianic references to Lincoln among African Americans during his visit to Richmond, see Porter, 295–8. Cited in Gorman, 27. “Richmond. A Diary of Events to Thursday.”

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25 Martin Moran on behalf of the United States Historical Society to Friend of Richmond Renaissance, undated letter, Lincoln Statue 2003, John Coski Files. 26 Harold Holzer, “When Lincoln and Son Came to Richmond,” Undated, unpaginated fold-out. Lincoln Statue 2003, John Coski Files. 27 Kline quoted in Nicole Edwards, “Beacon Foundry’s Statue Captures Abraham Lincoln’s Fatherly Side,” Poughkeepsie Journal, January 27, 2003, 3D. American casualties on foreign soil were related to the devastating loss of lives at the battle of Sharpsburg in Maryland, see Deb Riechmann, “Recent Conflicts Show Victory Attainable without a Heavy Loss of American Lives,” Pensacola News Journal, March 30, 2003, 2. Lincoln had been a malleable historical figure at times of national crisis; in the Second World War posters, he was paired with Washington and Jefferson to connect the Revolutionary conflict, the Civil War, and the ongoing global conflict and the loss of American lives overseas, see Barry Schwartz, “Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II,” American Sociological Review 61, no. 5 (1996): 908–27. The statue’s present site below the Virginia War Memorial, which commemorates Virginia’s fallen in the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, makes this continuity more apparent. 28 “Saddam Statue,” Richmond Free Press, April 10–12, 2003, A10. Underscoring the connections with the Iraq war, protesters at the unveiling held signs inscribed with “Saddam Bin Lincoln. Our Blood on His Hands, Murderer,” see Michael Paul Williams, “Can Statue Bind Up Wounds,” Richmond Times Dispatch, April 7, 2003, B 1. 29 Lance Gray, “Furor Builds over Lincoln Statue,” Atlanta Constitution, February 13, 2003, A17. Marie Rust, the Northeast Regional Director of the NPS reiterated this message noting the need to understand the “complexity of emotions, politics and personalities,” in the conflict. Marie Rust to John V. Moeser, April 9, 2003 in Letters to Participants of Lincoln Statue Dedication in RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy Box 1 of 3. Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records, Superintendent’s Files. 30 The statement belongs to Paul Miller, a representative for Verizon, see Will Jones, “Groups Donate Money for Statue,” Richmond Times Dispatch, March 11, 2013, B3. Various organizations and companies, including the Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation and the Verizon Foundation, funded the parapet and the plaza in front of the statue. 31 For the revitalization of Neo-Confederate advocacy, see Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Vintage Departures, 1998). 32 See, “Lincoln Statue Is Unveiled, and Protesters Come Out,” New York Times, April 6, 2003, accessed June 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/06/us/lincolnstatue-is-unveiled-and-protesters-come-out.html?pagewanted=1; and Michael Shear and Peter Whoriskey, “Lincoln Statue Heightens Old Pains; Confederate Backers Say They’ll Never Recognize Tribute,” Washington Post, April 6, 2003, C6. Also, see Jan Ciensky, “Lincoln Monument Angers Richmond,” National Post (Toronto), March 1, 2003, 17, who reported that the statue was the “latest blow for neo-Confederates.” 33 Petitiononline.com folder, in RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy Box 1 of 3. Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records, Superintendent’s Files. Financial concerns were also at the forefront of the opposition, including the allocation of $45,000 toward the realization of the statue by the City Council.

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Detractors raised questions on potentially financial improprieties on the part of the United States Historical Society and its status as a non-profit entity. Representative Virgil H. Goode asked the NPS to examine the non-profit status of the United States Historical Society, particularly on the earnings from the sale of the miniature versions of the statue as a fundraising mechanism, see Will Jones, “Statue Group Probe Sought,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 25, 2003, B1. 34 “Yes, Lincoln; Yes, here,” Richmond Times Dispatch, December 26, 2002 A1, 15. For a first-person account of Bowling’s perspectives on the Civil War and Lincoln, see Ferguson, 3–6. 35 Dolores F. Wood, Letter to the Editor, Richmond Times Dispatch, January 6, 2003, A8. 36 Robert H. Lamb, Letter to the Editor, “Lincoln Statue Inspires More Comment,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 18, 2003, A8. 37 As Tyler-McGraw has noted some southerners considered “Northerners, government employees and highly educated people of any background … as the natural enemies of their cultural truths,” see Tyler-McGraw, 164. 38 Email correspondence to Cynthia MacLeod, December 17, 2002, in Emails in Opposition to Proposed Lincoln statue Folder 1 of 3, 2002 in RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy 1 of 3. Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records, Superintendent’s Files. 39 Buzz Carey, Columbia County, FL. Petition against the Lincoln Statue. 40 Jim Wade, Petition against the Lincoln Statue. 41 The theatrical release in February of 2003 of the popular Gods and Generals emboldened southern heritage advocates. Director Ron Maxwell’s preoccupation with Civil War themes re-emerged in 2013 with the film Copperhead, in which the main character Abner Beech is focused on Lincoln’s constitutional violations, see Sidney Blumenthal, “Romanticizing the Villains of the Civil War,” Atlantic, July 22, 2013, accessed June 24, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/ romanticizing-the-villains-of-the-civil-war/277969/. 42 Thomas Di Lorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2002). 43 Lamb. 44 Bennett, emphasizing Lincoln’s equivocal position toward racial equality, argued that Lincoln capitulated to the exclusionary desires of white Americans, “the white dream,” and “pretended to be an emancipator for tactical reasons.” Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson Publishing, 1999), 65. Also, Chandra Manning, “The Shifting Terrain of Attitudes towards Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 34, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 18–39. Ignoring Lincoln’s racial perspectives as a critique of the statue, City Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin remarked, “the man saved us from hell. And I don’t give a damn what motivated him.” Jeremy Redmon, “Council: Lincoln Statue ‘Symbol of Unity,’” Richmond Times Dispatch, February 25, 2003 A1, 10. 45 H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2009), 172–3. Despite Mencken’s acerbic criticism of the cultural banality of the South, his perspectives on Lincoln appealed to Confederate ideologues, and the Confederate Veteran carried his account of Lincoln, see Howard M. Lovett, “The Emperor’s Beautiful Clothes,” Confederate Veteran 29, no. 9 (1921): 344–5.

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46 The Sons of Confederate Veterans attempted to legitimate their agenda further by organizing a conference entitled “Lincoln Reconsidered,” where DiLorenzo urged a fundamental reconsideration of Lincoln, see Will Jones, “Lincoln’s Stature, Statue Assailed,” Richmond Times Dispatch March 23, 2003, B1. For the educational materials at the conference, and personal interactions with the attendees, see Ferguson, 18–23. Also, see Ron Holland, “Lincoln’s War,” Southern Heritage, accessed June 2, 2019, http://www.southernheritage411.com/truehistory.php?th=009. 47 For the original proposal regarding the location, see Dean, 75. In conversation, Dave Ruth told me that Chimborazo Park was also proposed as a site for the statue due to its historic significance; it was the location of a hospital for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and then became a camp for freedmen in the post-bellum period. This location was abandoned as it is in the outskirts of the city. On Monument Avenue, see among others, Sarah S. Driggs, Richard Guy Wilson, and Robert P. Winthrop, Richmond’s Monument Avenue (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). In the wave of national contestations against Confederate monuments that emerged in 2017, a state commission in Richmond debated the future of the avenue, see Monument Avenue Commission Report, July 2, 2018, accessed March 20, 2019, https://www.richmond.com/monument-avenue-commission-final-report/ pdf_98dfbab1-3a10-52d4-ab47-f4a2d9550084.html. From February to November 2019, the Valentine Museum had on view Monument Avenue: General Demotion/ General Devotion, on proposals to amend or alter the Confederate statues on the avenue, see https://thevalentine.org/exhibition/gdgd/, accessed June 2, 2019. 48 This was not the first effort to memorialize Lincoln in Richmond. In 1892, while organizing for an Emancipation celebration, African Americans proposed to fundraise for a monument to Lincoln in Richmond hoping that the “movement would certainly meet with success.” See, “They Are Thankful,” Richmond Dispatch, January 2, 1892, 1, 7. Nothing came of the proposal. Although Kline is credited with the realization of the Lincoln and Tad statue, Edward C. Smith, director of the American Studies Program at American University, proposed the idea of a Lincoln statue in Richmond at the Confederate Heritage Day at Pamplin Park in 2001. An African American, Smith often favored the presence and display of Confederate symbols in public. Referencing the prospect of the Lincoln statue, he noted: “If that should ever happen, the war would finally be over.” See “Black Historian Wants to Place Lincoln Statue in Richmond,” Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia) May 2, 2001, C5. 49 Redmon. 50 “Lincoln Statue Arouses Ire Outside of Richmond,” Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia), March 5, 2003, 16. Recent monumental additions have diversified the city’s symbolic sites; Stanley Bleifeld’s The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial (2008) acknowledges the struggle for school desegregation in Virginia in 1951. In 2017 a fourteen-year campaign culminated in the unveiling of the Maggie Walker Monument by Antonio Tobias Mendez, honoring the influential African American entrepreneur in Richmond. 51 Jeffrey L. Clark, Letter to the Editor, “Richmond Still Debates Historic Topic,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 17, 2003, A12. 52 Jane C. Talley, Letter to the Editor, “Richmond Still Debates Historic Topic,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 17, 2003, A12.

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53 Michael P. Williams, “Statue Plan Reignites Controversy,” Richmond Times Dispatch, December 30, 2002, B1. 54 Scott Bass, “Lincoln Events This Weekend,” Richmond Free Press, April 3–5, 2003, B10. 55 Margaret Ellen Mayo, Letter to the Editor, “Statue Debate Focuses on History,” Richmond Times Dispatch, February 4, 2003, A12. 56 For the prolonged disputes that began at Vanderbilt University in 2002–3, over the renaming of buildings commemorating Confederate heritage, see Bobby Ross Jr., “Vanderbilt Sued over Plans to Rename ‘Confederate’ Dorm,” Atlanta Constitution October 20, 2002, B5. Also for the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, see https://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/about/letter.html, accessed June 23, 2019. Opponents to the Lincoln statue also referenced the 2003 dispute regarding a statue of Lee on private land near Antietam battlefield. In 2005 the NPS purchased the land and has maintained the statue on the site. In 2017 and again in 2019, Congressmen have called for the removal of the Lee statue from the Antietam battlefield, see H.R. 790 Robert E. Lee Statue Removal Act, accessed June 28, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/970/text?r=83. 57 Debates were ongoing in Virginia over the inclusion of the Confederate flag on license plates throughout the 1990s and into the 2010s, see Jonathan Leib, “Identity, Banal Nationalism, Contestation, and North American License Plates,” Geographical Review 101, no. 1 Popular Icons (2011): 37–52. Virginia observed April as Confederate History Month from 1994 to 2002, and again in 2010, but not in the present, see Katherine Walker, “United, Regardless, and a Bit Regretful: Confederate History Month, the Slavery Apology, and the Failure of Commemoration,” American Nineteenth Century History 9, no. 3 (2008): 315–38. 58 Petition against the Lincoln Statue. 59 Lee Rice, Letter to the Editor, “Lee’s Dignity Seems to Be in Short Supply Today,” Richmond Times Dispatch, January 25, 2003, A14. 60 Throughout the 1990s during the Virginia General Assembly, reenactors and Confederate Heritage groups gathered at the State Capitol in the Old House of Delegates, where the Confederate Congress met and celebrated the state holiday Lee-Jackson Day. Groups professed their “affection, reverence and undying remembrance” of the Confederate flag, and sang “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” the state’s official song. See, Peter Carlson, “State’s Rites,” Washington Post, February 25, 1996, accessed May 27, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/ magazine/1996/02/25/states-rites/59bab571-3f0c-44c4-a89f-eca19b0256f4/?utm_ term=.589ce2a8c177. 61 For the Ashe monument, see Barbee, 145–76, and Jonathan Leib, “Separate Times, Shared Spaces: Arthur Ashe, Monument Avenue and the Politics of Richmond, Virginia’s Symbolic Landscape,” Cultural Geographies 9 (2002): 286–312. On June 22, 2019, one of the city’s main thoroughfares that intersect Monument Avenue was renamed Arthur Ashe Boulevard, see Kurt Streeter, “Richmond Is at a Crossroads. Will Arthur Ashe Boulevard Point the Way?” New York Times, June 21, 2019. 62 For the controversy over this project, see Jonathan I. Leib, “Robert E. Lee, ‘Race,’ Representation and Redevelopment along Richmond, Virginia’s Canal Walk,” Southeastern Geographer 44, no. 2 (2004): 236–62. 63 The comprehensive redesign of the area of the Canal Walk would include “memorials, monuments, murals and interpretive markers,” representative of the city’s multilayered economic and political history, see Leib, 239. For the long-standing

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negotiations over the city’s historical identity and its economic and ideological impact since the nineteenth century, see Reiko Hillyer, “‘On to Richmond’: Richmond and the New Dominion,” in Designing Dixie: Tourism, Memory, and Urban Space in the New South (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995). 64 Richmond Renaissance, a long-standing coalition of business, philanthropists, and educational leaders aimed to invigorate Richmond’s old downtown, then suffering a long-enduring economic plight. The proposed $50,000,000 tourism initiative included the National Center for the Civil War and Emancipation at Tredegar Iron Works, along with the restoration of Jackson Ward, the City’s historically Black neighborhood, improvements along the riverfront at the James River, and a multifaceted attention to Civil War history. For the debates surrounding this proposal, see Barbee, 152–5. For the archives of Richmond Renaissance at Virginia Commonwealth University, see A Guide to the Richmond Renaissance Inc. Archives, 1956–1995, accessed May 27, 2019, https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/ view?docId=vcu-cab/vircu00046.xml.While many applauded touristic development around the city’s Civil War history, others suggested that any discussion over Confederate memory would remind them of slavery, see LeVonne E. Johnson, “Letters,” Richmond Times Dispatch, July 11, 2004, D2. For the economic benefits of heritage tourism in Virginia, see John Accordino and Fabrizio Fasulo, “The Economic Impact of Heritage Tourism in Virginia” (Virginia Commonwealth University: Center for Urban and Regional Analysis at VCU, 2017), accessed June 26, 2019, https://cura.vcu.edu/media/cura/pdfs/cura-documents/HeritageTourism_ FINALE_02-16-17.pdf. 65 National Park Service, Interpretation at Civil War Sites: A Report to Congress, March 2000, accessed July 8, 2019, http://npshistory.com/publications/interpretation/cwsites-interp-2000.pdf. 66 Ibid., 6. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. The NPS undertook a coordinated effort to re-educate its own interpreters so that they would be better able to “respond in an informed and thoughtful manner to the differing opinion and beliefs held by the visiting public.” See, Interpretation at Civil War Sites: A Report to Congress, 5. See, “Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War,” 2001, accessed July 2, 2019, http:// npshistory.com/series/symposia/rally_high_ground/contents.htm. 69 Typescript of City Council meeting minutes, Monday, June 10, 2002, in American Civil War Center documents, letters, articles 2005 in RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy Box 1 of 3, Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records, Superintendent’s Files. Also, see Nicole McMullin, “Civil War Center Plan, Merges New, Old Facilities,” Richmond Times Dispatch, February 21, 2004, B1, B3. 70 Jim Dunn, the president of the Greater Richmond Chamber of Commerce, reiterated that the “Civil War has been divisive in Richmond for a long time, and may be the one thing that has kept this region over the years from reaching its full potential.” See, Matthew Philips, “Raising the Past: Tredegar Iron Works to House the American Civil War Center,” Richmond.com, copy in American Civil War Center documents, letters, articles 2005 in RICH 7532, Lincoln Statue Controversy Box 1 of 3. Richmond National Battlefield Park Resource Management Records. The site of Tredegar Iron Works, now identified collectively as Historic Tredegar, has hosted a variety of museums, including the Valentine Riverside from 1994 to1995, an extension of the

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Valentine History Center, and the American Civil War Center from 2006 to 2013. In 2013, the American Civil War Center merged with the Museum of the Confederacy to form the American Civil War Museum currently on the site. The Richmond National Battlefield Park Visitor Center, part of the NPS that owns the Lincoln Statue has also been on the site. For the complex politics of the Confederate Museum, whose collections are now part of the American Civil War Museum, see Reiko Hillyer, “Relics of Reconciliation: The Confederate Museum and Civil War Memory in the New South,” Public Historian 33, no. 4 (2011): 35–62. 71 “Hoped for Reconciliation: Lincoln Bore No Malice toward South,” Commentary II, Richmond Times Dispatch, April 24, 2005, E6. On this occasion, a small contingency of Neo-Confederates protested against Lincoln, see Gary Robertson, “Protesters Show Up at Lincoln Prize Ceremony,” Richmond Times Dispatch, April 22, 2005, B3. 72 Ibid. 73 Barry Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in LateTwentieth Century America (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 239. Schwartz analyzes the dynamic fluctuations of Lincoln’s legacy, valorizes generational responses to Lincoln, and analyzes the ebb and flow of Lincoln’s public favor or disfavor in the context of contemporary social and political exigencies. 74 Brag Bowling, “President Jefferson Davis Returns to Richmond,” Confederate Veteran (May/June 2008): 16–17, 57. 75 “Is Davis Statue Just ‘Tit-for-Tat’” Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia), June 8, 2008, A9. 76 Will Jones, “Statue of Jefferson Davis Is Proposed,” Richmond Times Dispatch, June 10, 2008, B1, B6. The statue was ultimately donated to the Jefferson home, “Beauvoir,” in Biloxi, Mississippi where it still stands. 77 Barr, 260. 78 Barr, 261. For one such particular perspective, see Bea Layfield’s petition that expanded the scope of her discontent to include not only Yankees from “attacking and maligning our Beloved Southland? They, and the espanic [sic] illegal (immigrants), the immigrants from the middle east, india, asia, central and south america [sic] and Mexico, are ruining our Beloved CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA [sic].” Petition against the Lincoln Statue. 79 Schwartz articulates the challenges of individual and collective memory throughout his study, see 134–45. 80 Bob Willard, Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission: A Legislative History, December 2000, 1–3, accessed June 12, 2019, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/ lincoln/news/ALBC1.pdf. 81 It should be noted that although the Richmond National Battlefield Park Visitor Center and the American Civil War Museum are on the same campus, they are independent entities, a Federal agency and a non-profit institution, respectively, and they both rent land from the private corporation that owns the site. They do not coordinate their educational programs, although in essence they are mutually supportive in their educational objectives on the multifaceted interpretation of the Civil War. The NPS has a program titled “Meet Mr. Lincoln,” intended for very young elementary students that is largely devoid of politics. The American Civil War Museum discusses the visit, but not the statue, or its relationship to the city’s broader commemorative grounds.

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82 At the time of its installation, the statue was located across from the Tredegar Patterns Building that housed the Richmond National Battlefield Park Visitor Center. The entrance to the Visitor Center was subsequently moved to the lower level. In October of 2019, it was announced that the Visitor Center will be moved to another location at Historic Tredegar and it is unclear at this writing whether the Lincoln statue will be moved as well, see, “A New Future at Tredegar for the National Park Service,” accessed October 4, 2019, https://www.nps.gov/rich/learn/news/a-new-future-at-tredegar-forthe-national-park-service.htm. 83 Following the installation of the statue, the NPS conducted informal surveys of visitors’ perspectives on the legacy of the Civil War. Visitors were asked to fill out notecards on the question What Does the Civil War Mean to You? and occasionally they referenced their perspectives on Lincoln and the statue. My thanks to Ethan Bullard for sharing transcripts of these with me. 84 For one such integrated effort in St. Louis, see Andrew Hurley, “Narrating the Urban Waterfront: The Role of Public History in Community Revitalization,” Public Historian 28, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 19–50. Hurley also cites studies that explore urban renewal and public history initiatives. 85 In 2007, a 15-foot-tall statue entitled Reconciliation by Stephen Broadbent, commemorating the triangular slave trade was installed in downtown Richmond close to one of the largest slave auction markets on the eastern seaboard. 86 The unveiling of the monument was scheduled for April 2020, but was not realized due to COVID-19, see, https://www.americanevolution2019.com/event/ emancipation-proclamation-and-freedom-monument-dedication/, accessed March 9, 2020. 87 Currently, didactic panels installed just prior to the entrance and on the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge in the proximity of Tredegar Ironworks and Brown’s Island provide a brief history of the burning of Richmond and Lincoln’s visit, and include quoted excerpts from his interactions with African Americans. The installation of Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War statue by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as an explicit counter-monument to the statues of Confederate actors on Monument Avenue, provides yet another “teachable monument,” to the city’s public landscape, see “Sculpture Created by Kehinde Wiley for the VMFA,” accessed December 30, 2019, https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/. Also see, Kriston Capps, “Kehinde Wiley’s Anti-Confederate Memorial,” New Yorker, December 24, 2019, accessed December 30, 2019. 88 Holland. 89 Charles H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Schocken, 1964), 121, cited in Schwartz, Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era, 115. 90 “Commemorating the Bicentennial of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States,” Senate Joint Resolution No. 343, February 10, 2009, accessed June 18, 2019, https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?091+ful+SJ343ER+hil. Also, Virginia’s Lincoln. Celebrating the Bicentennial of the Birth of Abraham Lincoln includes a significant array of links to primary documents and educational resources, see http://dls.virginia.gov/GROUPS/MLK/Lincoln_/Lincoln2.htm#commemoration, accessed June 18, 2019.

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Paper Monuments as Public Pedagogy By Sue Mobley

Introduction In the late afternoon, after the near daily downpour that sets the rhythm of a New Orleans summer, we met as a team to inspect a block-long stretch of colorful posters wheat pasted to the side of an abandoned movie theatre. We were penned in by the bus shelter behind us—one of only a handful across the city—and the large crowd of people on their way home from hospitality jobs and schools, as we inspected the different varieties of mold growing up over paragraphs of text and adding new color to the installation. He approached so quietly that we didn’t notice him at first, despite the neon green shirt worn by the street sweepers for the Downtown Development District. Coughing to get our attention, Kevin introduced himself and launched into a story, pointing to one of our posters, “Desire Standoff,” to illustrate his points as he narrated the expanded version of the story, based on his personal experiences as a child in the Black Panthers’ breakfast program.1 A daily presence in the area, Mister Kevin served as an unofficial docent for the gallery as a whole, making it his mission to engage school children waiting for the bus, and giving tours of the posters, all of which he had read closely. For over a year, Canal Street was home to four block-long Paper Monuments poster galleries, the largest featuring forty-five posters that stretched across the exterior of the abandoned Lowes State Palace theatre, along with several smaller collections (Figure 13.1). Serving as public education and proposal collection sites, the Canal Street corridor installations leveraged the built-in audience of New Orleans’ highest used bus stops and revealed the asset of recent history as an entry point. In telling the story above on a tour for a national conference, another docent arose, an older Jewish woman and native New Orleanian who had participated in the 1960 sit-in at McCrory’s, the subject of one of the featured posters. She was immediately deputized to expand upon the narrative of that poster with her own personal experiences, another example of the graceful blurring of memory and history that was persistent throughout the Paper Monuments process.

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Figure 13.1  One “hall” of the Canal Street Galleries, New Orleans, 2018. Courtesy of John Ludlam for Paper Monuments.

What Is Paper Monuments? Paper Monuments, a public art and public history project, was developed within the context of the removal of four confederate statues in New Orleans in the spring of 2017. The Paper Monuments team, a collective of designers, artists, urbanists, and educators, first gathered as a group of friends and colleagues, watching as workers under floodlights slowly pried and lifted the mounted statue of P.G.T. Beauregard from its marble base in front of the entrance to City Park. Over the course of the long evening, we discussed the assembled crowd: the differences readily apparent between those on the right side of history and those on the wrong side of history, separated by a narrow aisle of aluminum barricades and a vast gulf of emotion, and we began to ask the question, “What’s next?” That question grew into an exploration of what had been, what was, and what mattered to New Orleans, an exploration that would unfold throughout the celebration of our city’s tricentennial year, over the arc of a historic municipal election, and within a growing network of projects and cities asking the same questions. While the most visible elements of the Paper Monuments project were the public art installations, public proposals for prospective new monuments were at the heart of the process: a collection of what our city’s residents desired to see valued through their representation in public spaces throughout New Orleans. We set out to collect 1,500 public proposals, an ambitious, but achievable number over the course of two

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years. In doing this, we initially echoed the approach of our sibling public art and history project, Monument Lab, which had begun asking Philadelphia residents in 2015, “what’s an appropriate monument for our city today?” Over the course of our two-year process, however, we adapted that model to address differences in culture, urban form, and context between the two cities. Paper Monuments drew heavily on our collective backgrounds in community-engaged design processes to layer various phases and media of public art and public history while collecting and applying data iteratively throughout the project. Phase One of Paper Monuments worked to pair historical scholarship with locally commissioned artwork to share and amplify the stories that too often are lost or obscured when the tourism narrative recounts New Orleans history. Looking for a means to take the conversation to a broader public and leveraging our personal and professional ties within a very small budget, we opted to create a series of posters that told the subaltern stories of New Orleans. The stories of our communities and residents who were poor and working-class, Black and brown, women and children, lesbian, gay, trans and queer, immigrants and refugees, those who were and are unlikely to be elevated on any pedestal. The poster series worked to address a long-standing challenge: the need to expand the range of New Orleans’ historical narrative beyond the romanticized marketing approach that drives tourism and, in turn, influences how we view the city in which we live. The centrality of tourism and the tourist narrative to perceptions of New Orleans are so strong that they have shaped scholarly work and defined public investment. They have also created a shorthand of cultural signifiers that “authentically” typify the city: gumbo, jazz, exoticism, and languid debauchery. In asking for proposed monuments for New Orleans, we often received proposals of monuments to New Orleans, proposals that attempted to comprehensively represent the city and drew heavily upon the tourism and marketing repertoire. Without disrupting that narrative, there was little room for responses that engaged deeply with the city rather than regurgitating its tropes. This myth-making of the city, a process that emerged during Reconstruction, is rooted in the romantic nineteenth-century literature of Lafcadio Hearn, George Washington Cable, and Charles Gayarre, along with the myriad travel narratives of the late-nineteenth century. These texts framed New Orleans as an exceptional singularity, somewhere between Europe and the northernmost city of the Caribbean, but by necessity outside of the parameters of traditional American Protestant values and often outside of modernity.2 “Through these artistic representations,” writes anthropologist Shannon Dawdy, “New Orleans became a foil for the rest of the nation, an imaginary island of colonial dissipation within a country relentlessly committed to moral and material progress.”3 Beginning in the 1930s, these romantic narratives would be built upon by a bevy of professional tourism and marketing agencies, whose efforts became critical to the economy of New Orleans as changes to shipping through containerization and the collapse of oil and gas rendered tourism the city’s primary economic engine.4 The chief innovation of this marketing approach was the introduction of multicultural tourism

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in the 1980s, a process largely enacted through the absorption of the independent Black tourism body into the city’s main marketing agencies.5 This attempt to reach the emerging market of middle-class Black tourists would heavily leverage cultural authenticity, signifying racial difference through the assertion of relative historic harmony amongst a tripartite racial caste and foregrounding Black musical forms, Creole food, and Caribbean ties. The economic motive behind New Orleans’ historical constructions as tourism marketing device is particularly stark; however, it differs from more traditional historymaking processes primarily because of the totality of the message, and the persistence of the messengers, bolstered by a market-driven framework. History making as a project, and as an inherently political project, is largely enacted through the synthesis of contested narratives into the singular and unassailable voice of authority. The subaltern is erased, or at best referred to in aggregate, while those who had power and agency are given their names, if not the nuance of their contexts. To challenge the authority of this “known” and marketed history, Paper Monuments relied heavily upon scholars for the poster series, asking that they lend their expertise to the project of disrupting conceptions of history, while admittedly simultaneously upholding academic hierarchy for the sake of establishing our project’s legitimacy.6 Paper Monuments’ reliance on scholarly writing for our poster series introduced literacy challenges for our target audiences. In 2014, the now-closed Lindy Boggs Center for Community Literacy at Loyola University reported that nearly 40 percent of New Orleans’ population had a literacy rate below fifth grade and, in 2018, 46 percent of high school students in the city were held back at least one year.7 Working with so many collaborators also produced challenges for coherence. While all of the narratives selected met Paper Monuments’ goals of elevating subaltern histories, not all of those submitted participated within the same framework of restoring agency and actors to both the construction and maintenance of systems of oppression and to historic resistance to those systems. The authors’ framings varied, rooted in their own relationships to power, the normative practices of their various fields, and, of course, their personal stances. Taken together, however, the poster series threaded historiography into a loosely interwoven narrative with overlaps in actors, places, and communities, punctuated by moments of sharp power analysis, such as in Leon Waters’ narrative of the 1892 General Strike. Illustrated by artist Henry Lipkis, Waters’ essay told the story of the white Scalesmen and Packers unions and the Black Teamsters who formed the nascent Workingmen’s Amalgamated Council in the face of the combined power of shipping interests consolidated in the New Orleans’ Board of Trade. Despite the Board’s wellfunded attempts to divide and conquer by offering to negotiate with the white unions, using the white newspapers to generate anti-Black sentiment, offering higher wages to scabs, and eventually calling in the state militia, the Council maintained their solidarity. When the Council called for a general strike, over 25,000 workers, from musicians to utility workers, along with the entire port, went out on strike. This collective action left New Orleans in the dark and ground commerce to a halt. The general strike was initiated in the same year that Homer Plessy stepped on a train to challenge separate

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accommodations and as the encroachment of Jim Crow laws on Black lives was gaining momentum. From the perspective of the present, the oppression that would follow seems inevitable, but this was also a moment in which, as Waters makes clear, solidarity could challenge hegemony and alternate outcomes were entirely possible.

Approaches to Public Engagement Paper Monuments’ process was dedicated to re-envisioning not just which stories we told about New Orleans, but also how and where we told them. We wanted to ensure that everyone had access to seeing stories of our shared histories. To that end, posters were available for free in a 12 × 18-inch format at all branches of the New Orleans Public Libraries, New Orleans Recreation Development Commission Centers, and independent bookstores throughout the city. Our newspaper series, The Paper Trail also provided context on the project, along with reprinted posters and public proposals. We also approached making Paper Monuments posters publicly accessible through the methods of tactical urbanism and placemaking: wheat pasting posters near the events described, creating a citywide scavenger hunt for installations on blighted buildings and creating large-scale galleries within the Canal Street corridor, focusing on transit stops identified by transit advocacy organization Ride New Orleans as having highfrequency use (Figure 13.2). As a collective whose professional experience is largely

Figure 13.2  High school students fill out public proposal forms at the bus station, New Orleans, 2018. Courtesy of Chris Daemmrich for Paper Monuments.

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grounded in the built environment and design professions, our approaches and tactics were heavily informed by that specific expertise. An extended working visit to Philadelphia with the Monument Lab team heightened our awareness of an additional contrast between the two cities. Philadelphia’s high pedestrian use of downtown streets and multitude of public gathering spaces highlighted New Orleans’ comparative lack of density and significant dearth of wellused public spaces. It would have been impracticable to achieve our public proposal goals through Monument Lab’s laboratory model, which placed small shipping containers in heavily trafficked areas. Instead, we strategized a more mobile approach. This required building strong partnerships with civic and community institutions, being physically present within the systems and locations through which people could be reached directly, and developing a large network of volunteers to assist in proposal collection. It also required us to frame our systems analysis at the front end of the project: to identify the brief but recurring conditions in which those most often left out of formal planning and civic engagement processes already gathered in large numbers. Oversampling in public engagement processes for urban policy and design is a critical corrective to higher response rates from those best organized and most motivated to shape civic life. Neighborhood associations, better-resourced schools, or civic booster groups participate at high volume, which tend to skew samples wealthier, whiter, and older. Black and brown people, working-class and poor people, children, and the elderly are far less likely to be included without intentional efforts to do so. We were also cautious to avoid intensive processes or trigger planning fatigue in our project design, given New Orleans’ relatively recent history with expansive planning processes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in which participation often became mandatory, with proof of neighborhood engagement categorically necessary to ensure the continued survival of that neighborhood. Despite our initial analysis and best efforts to leverage existing systems, there remained substantial challenges to consistently reaching working-class New Orleans residents for proposal collection. While we identified a number of civic systems through which we should have been able to reach our priority populations, not all of them proved equally open to our intervention, nor equally productive for our proposal collection goals. The New Orleans transit system, along with our various civic and cultural institutions, offered consistently strong results with latitude for iterations on approaches to outreach (via posters, installations, and newspapers) and engagement (via proposal collection through tabling, story circles, and supported research events). The public library system also offered a productive partnership, supporting research events, panel discussions, and permanent stations for poster distribution and proposal submission. Other systems, such as public education and public spaces, proved far more difficult to navigate; we repeatedly found our efforts hampered by overlapping and conflicting fiefdoms, lack of clarity on processes or decision-making authority, and vague, if deeply felt, concerns that the subject matter might upset unspecified constituencies. To engage with the New Orleans transit system, we worked with transit advocacy organization Ride New Orleans to identify high-use, long-wait stops in the transportation

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system, most of which were concentrated at the Canal Street demarcation line, where the majority of the city’s busses and streetcars come together, but with only a handful of exceptions, do not cross. The Canal Street galleries leveraged wait times as long as fortyfive minutes during the day, and longer at non-peak hours, along with the necessity of bus and streetcar transfers among our working-class residents, for visibility, reading time, and proposal collection. The galleries also allowed our team to use tours and media coverage of the installations to highlight these systemic transportation problems as persistent, yet rectifiable, challenges facing New Orleans’ workers. In stark contrast, engagement at the K-12 level was massively unwieldy, made possible only because several members of our outreach team had direct classroom experience and access through arts programming or strong personal connections to individual teachers or administrators. Beyond our personal networks, engaging with students required seeking out permissions at the level of each individual school or at the administrative level, via Charter Management Organizations that run multiple schools. The immediate post-Katrina dissolution of the New Orleans public school system, along with its teachers’ union, has rendered the very phrase “school system” meaningless. There is no centralized point of oversight, access, or inclusion for community-based programming in schools. There is also little time or opportunity for children to engage academically outside of preparation for high-stakes testing on math and English. For Paper Monuments, that often meant months of negotiating to get a visit with a single charter high school class while being invited to come multiple times to independent, relatively wealthy selective schools with more flexibility in their schedules and curricula. To engage with the spaces in which working-class New Orleanians gather or through which they move means to also engage with the functions of race, class, and, underlying each, power, within our city. Proposal collection served as a stark two-year tour of differential access, one in which we learned not only from people’s proposals, but also from our conversations around them and the contexts in which those conversations occurred. Oral histories, a feature of our Stories as the Crossroads event series, along with conversations with passersby while tabling for public proposals, often provided far greater depth and narrative interest than the written proposals. Unfortunately, while there is video documentation of the Crossroads events, our research design was not well equipped to capture verbal information, a significant oversight in a highly verbal community. Paper Monuments’ reliance on written and visual information exchange, in both receiving and sharing data, sharply limited our capacity for reciprocity, which is ideally at the center of any process involving humans. Too often, our fields fall short of an even exchange or at least a mutually acceptable one. Even the most engaged planning processes may employ the language of ethnographic practice or its business school derivative, design thinking, and substitute extraction for exchange. In reckoning with the limitations of our professional toolkit to capture the more casual verbal exchanges that characterized the most vital elements of storytelling and conversation, we’ve been challenged to develop new tools and to look to other fields for guidance going forward.

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Re:Presenting Public Proposals Phase Two of the project, Paper Monuments Re:Present, was exhibited during the spring of 2019. A juried process selected local artists to create temporary, threedimensional “monument” installations, which drew from and interpreted the themes expressed in the public proposals. Still made primarily of paper, the transitory nature of the installations challenged the conception of monuments as permanent features of metal or stone, while simultaneously referencing the ephemeral cultural practices of our city: the claiming of space through second lines; the continuum of oral history in African-diaspora cultures; the call and response exchange of brass band, gospel, and Mardi Gras Indian musical traditions. With only ten installations, our team worked to balance a desire to expand into neighborhoods beyond the urban core with the desire to ensure that installations were located in places where relatively large numbers of people would see them, either in the course of daily travel or by relative ease in seeking them out specifically. In response to proposals calling for environmental justice and honoring grassroots efforts by residents—many of them immigrants—to rebuild the city after Hurricane Katrina, artist Lydia Stein created Remediation, a field of 15-foot sunflowers made of bamboo and papier-mâché towering over the intersection of St. Bernard and Claiborne Avenues, and standing in the shadow of the highway overpass. Remediation was a direct reference to widespread planting of sunflowers in 2006 and 2007 in an effort to remediate soil across the city and was recognized and remembered as such by neighborhood residents and passersby. The installation also served as an unexpected and welcome investment in the built environment of the Seventh Ward neighborhood, which drew attention from the public and the press.8 As we worked to remove the piece from its temporary site for a final exhibition at the New Orleans African American Museum, pedestrians stopped to ask why we were taking it away, and drivers rolled their windows down to shout: “Where are you taking our art?!” Brendon Palmer-Angell, another Re:Present artist, drew upon the many proposals referencing “small c” culture, proposals that elevated the quotidian experience of life in our city’s neighborhoods and wards: intergenerational exchange, the presence of elders on porches, conversations at the corner store, an interwoven lived experience of warmth, welcome, and belonging. Palmer-Angell’s piece, Together, was a collection of portraits of intergenerational Black neighbors and family members which when assembled created a profile of a young Black girl through the use of negative space. Together was installed in New Orleans’ West Bank neighborhood of Algiers at the Delcazel Playground, located on a current de facto segregation line in the neighborhood. The elders represented were touched to see their images monumentalized in a playground they had been prohibited to use as children under Jim Crow. Poet Sunni Patterson, a frequent Paper Monuments collaborator and one of the portraits featured in the piece, provided deeper history for the site selected, revealing that the Jim Crow playground had been built atop an antebellum cemetery. While the bodies of the slave owners had been reinterred in suburban Metairie in the 1910s, the bones of those they had enslaved remained buried under our feet.9

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Monument Lab as Model, Confederate Monuments as Context When Paper Monuments began, one of our earliest conversations with the team at Monument Lab drove home a key difference in context that our project would have to address. The conflicts around Confederate monument removal were still very fresh in New Orleans, during a period of weeks in which armed white supremacists “guarded” the locations of monuments slated for removal and residents engaged to various degrees in a delightfully broad range of activities to make them feel unwelcome. Beyond the direct confrontations and public presence of openly affiliated Nazis, there were more nuanced contestations, in which the merits of aesthetics and historical provenance were debated in marginally greater degrees of good faith by preservationists, scholars, and community elites. It was clear that the removal of four statues was insufficient to close those debates, and that immediate replacement was unlikely to achieve that goal either, though much of the local political class was inclined to do so and quickly move on. From our perspective, however, the conversations generated were the net gain of the removal process: sharpening contradictions in perception and surfacing conflicting understandings of history and the city. Paper Monuments was intended to join, document, and expand those conversations about who and what we remember, what events have shaped our city and our lives, along with which places and movements matter to us. We believed, and still believe, that New Orleans needed to allow for a period of empty pedestals in which the absence of resolution could sustain our collective capacity to continue the conversations begun within the removal period. Paper Monuments’ project was broader than the consideration of the former Confederate monument sites, but an ongoing focus on Tivoli Circle, the site from which a statue of Robert E. Lee was removed by the political establishment and the press, and the presence of a remaining 60-foot pillar, worked to define perceptions of the project as being specifically tied to that site. It is worth noting, however, that we received relatively few actual public proposals for Tivoli Circle, and that those we did receive tended to be far more clichéd in content than the pool of proposals at large.10 Paper Monuments neither restricted nor recommended any particular location to residents for their proposed monuments and respondents wrote in an incredibly varied range of chosen locations. Because of the fraught context of Confederate monument removal in which Paper Monuments began our work, we also persistently faced assumptions about bias in who would be welcome to participate in public events or submit public proposals, as well as the types of proposals that we would “allow.” These assumptions were often voiced in person, and rarely, but memorably, by known white supremacists in attempts to provoke direct confrontations. All of our team, along with our volunteers, modeled a radically democratic approach: explicitly inviting all present to participate at each event and assuring that all public proposals collected, regardless of content, would be included in the Paper Monuments archives.11

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Public Proposals as Public Memory As makes sense for a public history project launched within the context of Confederate monument removal and oriented toward contestation of popular historical narratives, a significant throughline of public proposals we received was the motif of historical correction and complication. These were occasionally straight-forward reinsertions of the missing: public proposals for representing erased or elided figures, such as a proposed monument to the victims of the Battle of Liberty Place or those who died by arson at the Upstairs Lounge. A strong sub-theme in the category of historical corrective reflected an impulse to complicate “known” history by restoring human fallibility and shades of grey to the actions of historical figures, or through contextualizing the period of action for which they are most known within the arc of their overall lifetime. We had public proposals for figures such as pirate Jean Lafitte represented as both hero and criminal, blurring the lines between the two and highlighting the role of power in defining either as a singular truth, and proposals for P.G.T. Beauregard within the context of his role in post-Civil War role reconciliation, rather than as a Confederate general. There were a large number of public proposals for monuments honoring women and Black historical figures, each wildly underrepresented in public art, historical representation, and monuments nationally, and all the more absent when those identities overlap. Scores of proposals raised the restoration of the feminine to public space and public memory as an explicit goal, citing the lack of representation of women in monuments and memorials, both on the level of a category of representation desired and deserved, and as the contextual framing given for proposals to individuals and groups of women. Those who took on the larger issue of female representation tended to list numerous locations or to specifically request the creation of many additional statues, works of art, and plaques honoring local women. Others simply listed the names of many women, or types of women, who should be represented. Similarly, proposals often presented Black historical figures, in the form of a list or called for multiple interventions across the city.12 Many held to the standard paradigms of the monumental: valorizing singular male leadership, often military, as with proposals for monuments to Commander Noel Carriere, Captain Andre Cailloux, and Lieutenant Governor Oscar Dunn; but most were far less conventional. It was striking to see the high rate at which proposals specifically named education leaders, advocates, and teachers within this category, though perhaps not surprising given the long history of education as a highly honored professional vocation in the Black community. Collectively, these proposals urged a consideration of the diversity of the Black experience and the mobility of the diaspora, calling upon ties to Senegal and the Slave Coast, as well as Haiti, Cuba, and the broader Caribbean. As one might expect from New Orleans, culture and cultural practices were extremely well represented in the public proposals. Proposals more frequently referenced historically rooted musical forms than other long-standing cultural traditions, with a strong preponderance of proposals for jazz music and well-respected

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individual jazz musicians, along with Storyville as the geographic origin of jazz. A far greater volume of cultural proposals, however, focused on modern manifestations of New Orleans culture, with suggested monuments to Mardi Gras Indians, brass bands, second lines, Super Sunday, rappers, and bounce musicians. Participants regularly contextualized this street-level culture as the most valued aspect of the city, alternately its heart, soul, center, etc. A strong subtheme of the culture category was perceived or threatened loss through gentrification and displacement, in concert with celebrating the community derived within these cultural practices. Given the impacts of high rates of rent intensification in New Orleans’ historic core on traditional informal transmission of cultural practices, these concerns are entirely valid.13 The subtheme of loss held constant through the quotidian variant of culture, which we termed “small c” culture, as opposed to the performance based “big C” culture of arts, music, and masking traditions. Here too, gentrification was named often as a specific concern, generally as part of the contextual reason for the proposal, though we also had multiple specific proposals to/about gentrification itself. Nor was this sense of loss confined to current displacement, with proposals focusing on specific previous large-scale erasures from the built and lived landscape of our city, including the housing projects which were demolished wholesale as part of the HOPE VI program, which markedly accelerated in the post-Katrina redevelopment of the city, the preinterstate vistas of the oak-lined promenade and former Black business district along Claiborne Avenue, and Charity Hospital. The most compelling category of proposals, however, were those for the truly monumental. Proposals that asserted inclusion, empathy, and equity as the core values of our city envisioned monuments to “Keeping Our Family Whole” where family is understood as the whole community, inclusive of its animals and natural habitat. Many of these proposed monuments broke sharply with the normative monumental form, placing figures at ground level, evoking or creating shelter, centering communitarian representations rather than valorizing individuals. Other proposals, what we termed “activist monuments,” rejected the monumental form entirely, proposing changes in policy, rather than physicality, as a mode of expressing similar themes. These proposed human needs met by substantive solutions: a living wage, universal access to health care, equal voting access, and investment in marginalized communities. In shifting from the paradigm of monumentality, in calling for active repair, rather than removal of harm, it is these activist monuments that offered the most comprehensive response to the Confederate monuments whose removal prompted the Paper Monuments project and provided an eminently compelling rebuttal to arguments for contextualizing, rather than removing them. It would be impossible to contextualize the Confederate monuments without framing them, not in reference to the individual men represented, or to the Civil War itself, but within the movement they embody, a cavalcade of reactionary politics stretching across the periods of their installation and into the present. The movement that established Confederate monuments in our midst requires not alternative monuments, but a counter-movement to confront its legacy.

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Notes 1

Name has been changed due to the subject’s concern with job security should his childhood affiliation with the Panthers become known. 2 Thomas Jessen Adams, Sue Mobley, and Matt Sakakeeny, “Introduction: What Lies beyond Histories of Exceptionalism and Cultures of Authenticity,” in Remaking New Orleans beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity, eds. Thomas Jessen Adams and Matt Sakakeeny (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2019), 1–32. 3 Shannon Lee Dawdy, Patina: A Profane Archaeology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 72. 4 Kevin Fox Gotham, Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture and Race in the Big Easy (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007). 5 Lynnell L. Thomas, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race and Historical Memory (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2014). 6 We also made the strategic decision to withhold formal titles, in an effort to ensure that the work produced by informal scholars carried the same weight as those within the academy but regretted the necessity of doing so. 7 Della Hasselle, “Trimming Away at Illiteracy One Hair Cut at a Time,” Louisiana Weekly, January 4, 2016, accessed August 29, 2019, http://www.louisianaweekly. com/trimming-away-at-illiteracy-one-hair-cut-at-a-time/; Katy Reckdahl, “About 40 Percent of New Orleans High School Students Are Held Back at Least 1 Grade,” Times-Picayune, January 8, 2019, accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.nola.com/ news/education/article_75a30f56-ef2a-510f-9213-96775b3d0dd1.html. In an effort to make the posters more accessible, our team provided light editing to remove fieldspecific jargon and to provide context clues for the most challenging words. Beyond these efforts, we relied on the majority of people, and particularly young people, having access to smartphones and each other to figure out any challenging language, an expectation that was largely met. 8 “Towering Sunflower Sculpture Appears in Seventh Ward,” WWL TV, March 25, 2019, accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.wwltv.com/article/entertainment/arts/ watch-towering-sunflower-sculpture-appears-in-7th-ward/289-f5edd80f-4006-45a9be86-383b91f28f03. 9 R. Stephanie Bruno, “Vanished Cemetery in Algiers Point a Historical Puzzle,” Times-Picayune, January 19, 2017, accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.nola.com/ entertainment_life/home_garden/article_bd451966-934a-50eb-b4df-7dce3c6688e6. html; and Nancy Brister, “The Old Duverje Chapel of Algiers,” Old New Orleans, accessed July 1, 2019, http://old-new-orleans.com/NO_Duverje_Chapel.html. 10 We suspect that one of the challenges for the respondents selecting Tivoli Circle was that the scale and centrality of the site tended to unduly influence the proposed monuments, chilling the creativity and intimacy so abundantly present in the overall collection of proposals. 11 The Paper Monuments public proposal archive is physically housed at the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans and digitally available as a collection in the Louisiana Digital Library, https:// louisianadigitallibrary.org. Poster archives are at the New Orleans Historic Collection and the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University. The Paper Monuments interim and final reports are available on Issuu, https://issuu.com/colloqate/docs/ pm_final_report-final.

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12 Many of the public proposals that the Paper Monuments team could plausibly have categorized within Blackness were far better situated within the category of Culture, emphasizing the importance of African American contributions to New Orleans culture. 13 See, for example, Blights Out, “The Cultural Ramifications of Gentrification in New Orleans,” Shelter Force, August 23, 2017, accessed August 29, 2019, https://shelterforce.org/2017/08/23/cultural-ramifications-gentrification-neworleans/;Olivier Cyran, “If You Can Kill This City, You Can Kill Any City, the Gentrification of New Orleans,” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 8, 2018, accessed August 29, 2019, https://mondediplo.com/2018/12/08neworleans; and Antonia Noori Farzan, “A White Store Owner’s Call Led to a Black Street Musician’s ‘Outrageous’ Arrest, Roiling New Orleans,” Washington Post, July 12, 2019, accessed August 29, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/12/new-orleans-brass-bandarrest-police-book-store/?utm_term=.b62b19c2fcae.

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Charging Bull and Fearless Girl: A Dialogue By Charlene G. Garfinkle

The bull stomps, head down, ready to charge. The girl holds her place, head up, staring down the bull. So describes Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull (1989) and Kristen Visbal’s Fearless Girl (2017), two bronze sculptures originally in the Bowling Green Park traffic island near Wall Street in New York City (Figures 14.1 and 14.2). They are not just two sculptures in a battle of wills, nor do they merely regard each other. They are in a dialogue; their physical connection conjures an exchanging of ideas and the social attitudes they represent. But this is not the only dialogue taking place. There is the dialogue, however unintended, which takes place between the artworks and their observers.

Figure 14.1  Arturo Di Modica, Charging Bull, Bowling Green Park, New York City, 1989, bronze, 13 x 11 ft. Courtesy of Creative Commons.

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Figure 14.2  Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl, 2017, formerly Bowling Green Park, New York City; currently in front of the New York Stock Exchange (11 Wall Street), bronze, 50 in. Courtesy of Elizabeth Garfinkle.

A corporate PR campaign intended the 2017 sculptural pairing of Charging Bull and Fearless Girl as a symbolic representation of gender inequality on Wall Street with the determined girl facing down the powerful, male-dominated banking industry. The Boston-based State Street Global Advisors commissioned the work in honor of International Women’s Day to celebrate “the power of women in leadership and the

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potential of the next generation of women leaders,” even though they themselves employ just a handful of women in top executive positions.1 Meanwhile, Di Modica’s creation of Charging Bull as non-commissioned, guerrilla art following the stock market crash of 1987 was meant as a positive image of America’s strength and resilience. To the public who viewed the scene—and there were many, many visitors who came to see the pair, take selfies with each of the combatants, and stand next to the girl in a mimicking pose (Figure 14.3)—the 11-foot-tall bull represented male power

Figure 14.3  Kristen Visbal, Fearless Girl with public in a mimicking pose. Photograph by author.

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threatening the resilience of women, and the 4-foot-tall girl responding strong and fearless in the face of this threat—“a symbol of feminist strength and possibility.”2 With the input of public reception, the positive image of the bull became negative, and the positive meaning of the girl masked the negative reality over what she supposedly triumphs—the actual lack of power of women in leadership positions at financial institutions. Even when we know the facts of artworks, the viewer’s response to a work can override those known facts. We know the original history and intention of each individual piece, but we also know the multiple levels of rewritten history and intention attached to the works once they became public art. Does it matter that the public has assigned a new story to these works, a story that is personally meaningful to them and comes from a particular need at a particular time? The word “dialogue” is usually defined not only as a conversation between two people but also as an interchange of ideas by open discussion. No words were spoken between the two bronze sculptures but communication still took place via stance, look, and the interplay of their relative positions to each other. Throughout this chapter, I use the first definition to inform the relationship between the bull and the girl, and the second definition to describe the relationship between the sculptural pair and their observers. In Critical Issues in Public Art, public art scholars Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster assert: “For any meaningful understanding of public art, it must be viewed in the complex matrix in which it is conceived, commissioned, built, and, finally, received.”3 This chapter analyzes the “complex matrix” in which these two sculptures exist—their individual and combined histories, intentions and viewer response, and relationship to workplace gender roles in a time of social and cultural questioning—to demonstrate how heated debates surrounding public sculpture can provide valuable opportunities for teachable moments. Charging Bull and Fearless Girl will be viewed as teachable monuments in light of the use of public art as obfuscation, the ephemeral meaning of a work of art once it becomes public, and the debate over removal and modification of controversial public art.

Charging Bull “In the early morning hours of Friday, December 15, 1989, Arturo [Di Modica] with a few friends dropped the Charging Bull on Broad Street right in front of the New York Stock Exchange.” A large 60-foot Christmas tree had been placed where he had planned access to his intended site, so he “decided to place the Charging Bull right under the tree, as a gigantic Christmas present for the City and the World.”4 The anonymous Christmas gift’s arrival was not appreciated by New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) officials who paid a private contractor to remove the sculpture, later that very day, to a police warehouse in Queens. Some of the NYSE employees were sorry to see it go, finding it humorous—as if “he was grazing in an area already occupied by the Christmas tree”—and seeing it as a good omen for the market in the coming year.5 By the end of the day, the New York Post had identified the artist as Arturo Di Modica, and

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its cover story, “Bah, Humbug! NY Stock Exchange grinches can’t bear Christmas gift bull,” showed an image of Charging Bull being unceremoniously carted away that very evening.6 Almost immediately, though, it found itself a permanent home. Arthur Piccolo of the Bowling Green Association contacted Di Modica to discuss a future home for Charging Bull. With the help of New York Parks Commissioner Henry Stern and then New York Mayor Ed Koch, the bull was placed in Bowling Green, at the intersection of Broadway and Morris Street, on the morning of December 20 where it has remained for the past thirty years, but only after the artist re-paid the NYSE the $5,000 in storage costs and removal expenses incurred to move the bull to storage. The sculpture remains on permanent loan to New York City’s Department of Parks and Recreation from the artist, who still owns the work. Di Modica created Charging Bull in response to Black Monday, on October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed. It was a symbol of courage representing, according to the artist, “the strength and power of the American people” and New York’s “can do spirit” of hard work and determination.7 He worked on the sculpture for over two years at his SoHo studio, spending $360,000 of his own money.8 Charging Bull is now one of New York City’s most visited tourist sites and has become an iconic New York landmark. “On any given day in Manhattan’s financial district, hordes of tourists can be found crowding around the sculpture, taking photos, or rubbing the bull’s nose, horns, or backside”9 with the belief that taking pictures (often lewd ones) at both ends brings good luck. Traditionally, a bull represents a good market and rising prices because its horns attack upward (while a bear connotes a bad market because it swipes downward for attack). Charging Bull, with head down to the ground and horns ready to rear up, conjures the “hope for the return to a bull market” after the 1987 crash.10 However, once Di Modica’s symbol of the “strength and power of the American people” was put into public space, public reception transformed it into a symbol of American greed in the world of high finance.11 With the arrival of Fearless Girl, “the complex matrix” in which it was received became even more complex.

The Dialogue Begins—Enter Fearless Girl Installed facing Charging Bull on March 7, 2017, Fearless Girl depicts a life-size (50 inches high) young girl. McCann New York ad agency, on behalf of State Street Global Advisors (the world’s third largest asset manager), commissioned artist Kristin Visbal “to create a sculpture to advertise the company’s index fund made up of gender-diverse companies” (it had initially included a plaque at her feet mentioning State Street’s SHE index, the fund’s ticker symbol, launched in 2016), as well as “to promote its campaign urging ‘greater gender diversity on corporate boards.’”12 The figure of Fearless Girl wears a streamlined dress and high-top sneakers and sports a swaying ponytail. With legs apart and feet firmly planted, she stares down the bull with fists on her hips and head upturned—both of which were part of the specifications of the commission and inspired by Wonder Woman—with an expression

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of not only fearlessness but also determination. Visbal “incorporated a little wind to make it interesting, to give her style and sass,” but the backward flow of her windblown skirt and movement of her ponytail also give the impression of the atmospheric change produced by the implied snort of the bull at her while leaving her undeterred. Visbal kept “her features soft; she is not defiant, she’s brave, proud and strong, not belligerent.”13 It was soon revealed that Fearless Girl was commissioned by an organization that itself had come under scrutiny for their low percentage of women in higher administrative levels. A few months after Fearless Girl was installed, State Street Corporate, the parent company of State Street Global Advisors, “agreed to pay $5 million mostly to settle claims that it discriminated against 305 top female employees by paying them less than men in the same position.”14 Although with three women among its eleven board members (a 25 percent representation rate), State Street Corporation is “higher than the average for Fortune 500 companies.”15 Beyond the intentions of its artist and commissioning agency, Fearless Girl assumed the role of women fighting back and taking a stand. In the face of Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency in 2016, and with it a reaffirmation of patriarchal supremacy and the misogyny he fostered on the campaign trail (most notably expressed in his “grab ’em by the pussy” comment in the leaked Access Hollywood tape), Fearless Girl quickly became a universal symbol of women’s empowerment (despite the fact that she portrays a girl, not a woman). Installed on the eve of International Women’s Day, Fearless Girl was intended to be on view for just one week with a short-term permit granted by the Street Activity Permit Office, a city agency which oversees things such as street festivals, thereby circumventing more official avenues of public art planning.16 The sculpture’s appearance followed on the heels of the post-inaugural Women’s March on Washington, one of the largest public protests in US history, which took place on January 21, the day following Trump’s swearing-in ceremony.17 A few weeks later, on February 7, Senator Elizabeth Warren was censured during the confirmation debate over Jeff Sessions’ nomination as attorney general for reading a letter written by Coretta Scott King regarding Sessions’ record on civil rights. “When Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to explain why Warren was silenced in the hearing,” he responded: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” With Warren’s removal from the floor of the US Senate, “nevertheless, she persisted” became the rallying cry for millions of women.18 In light of this contentious political climate, Di Modica’s stylized bull was transformed into a sleek symbol of the uncontrolled power of the Trump presidency. The realistic girl became a relatable symbol to women (and girls) to hold their ground and be fierce in the face of aggression, bullying, and uneven positions of power. As one woman viewer told The Guardian: “Look at the look she’s giving. Look at her confidence. You know what she’s saying? She’s saying women have balls, too. Women have balls, too.”19 By October of 2017, the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior and sexual harassment in the workplace sparked the growth of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, which greatly impacted the entertainment industry and realms of government but, ironically, financial institutions were left unscathed.20 It was still too risky for women to speak out.21

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Because of its immense popularity, Fearless Girl’s initial one-week permit was quickly extended to thirty days by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio as part of the Department of Transportation Art program, skirting more official agencies, thereby taking it throughout Women’s History Month to April 2.22 As noted by BusinessLIVE, “Within the first 12 hours the image had more than 1 bn Twitter impressions. Within the first 12 weeks this figure had reached 4.6 bn, and there had been 215,000 Instagram posts.”23 At the time of its rescheduled removal and in response to public petitions to extend its permit further (more than 38,000 people signed an online petition through change.org), it was announced that Fearless Girl was to remain in place for a full year through the end of the next International Women’s Day.24 Clearly, timing was everything. Fearless Girl had become an immediate and desperately needed symbol in light of explosive political and societal events. As Mayor de Blasio told The New York Times, “She is inspiring everyone at a moment when we need inspiration.”25 Well, not exactly everyone. Her presence immediately recast Charging Bull in a negative light and transformed its intended optimistic message of the strength of our country in a time of recession into a symbol of male chauvinism and a metaphorical obstacle to girls pursuing future careers in male-dominated institutions. Charging Bull’s artist was furious at the “change” made to his sculpture by the addition of the girl and refused to remain silent in the face of the sculptural interloper. Di Modica believed his sculpture to be art and the girl a mere “advertising trick.”26 Claiming Fearless Girl subverted the original meaning of his sculpture thus violating his trademark, copyright, and moral rights, Di Modica threatened legal action to have the intruding Girl removed.27 Di Modica’s protest set off a debate about the meaning of the paired sculptures. In response, Mayor de Blasio tweeted: “Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl.” Others defended Di Modica’s artistic rights. “Every sculpture needs space. That is the nature of sculpture,” argued sculptor Gabriel Koren. “If you put something else there, it changes it.” Fearless Girl is “cute,” but “you don’t stand up for women’s rights at the expense of the artist’s rights. Each right is equally important. I am saying this as a woman.”28 Some believed the girl was not solely responsible for the change in Charging Bull’s meaning, and that it had already been altered long before the appearance of Fearless Girl. “During the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests [on September 17, 2011], for example, New York City police put barricades around the statue to protect it from demonstrators.”29 Nearly thirty years separated the two works, but their individual histories and intentions intertwined on their traffic island. As cars sped by and busloads of visitors stopped to pose and snap selfies, the two combatants became one unit working off of each other, gaining their power from each other. They were frozen in dialogue with each other, and they, together, transformed into something else entirely. They became what the public perceived them to be, and this is how the second dialogue was formed. Over the years it was in place, the public adorned Fearless Girl with signs, floral bouquets, and other tokens, in a similar fashion to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Charging Bull has also been the recipient of public offerings. In 2010, the sculpture was wrapped in a pink and purple cozy and, in response to its

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original although spontaneous intention as a Christmas gift to New York City, the bull receives an annual Christmas wreath around its neck. Activists have also recontextualized these icons. In 2017, in solidarity for the Paris Climate Accord, the bull was vandalized with blue paint while the girl received a suffrage-style blue sash bearing the slogan “Draw the blue line.” Fearless Girl has worn a pink knit “pussyhat,” created for participants in the 2017 Women’s March as a symbol of solidarity and defiance, as well as a “Make America Great Again” cap of the conservative Trump supporters.30 She has even survived a papier mâché pug peeing at her feet.31 These modifications have all been documented, further fueling the social media phenomenon of Charging Bull and Fearless Girl.

The Dialogue Continues Fearless Girl was meant to be a temporary addition, rescheduled first to be removed at the end of March 2017 and then at the end of its year-long reprieve in March 2018, but no decision was reached about its relocation until November 2018. After long deliberations as to whether the girl would be moved to another location on her own, if both the girl and bull would be moved together, or if they would remain in place to continue the dialogue of their entwined lives, Fearless Girl was separated from Charging Bull on November 27, 2018, and installed on December 10 at her new home, facing the NYSE on Wall Street. At her former site facing Charging Bull, State Street Global Advisors placed a round plaque bearing a pair of small footprints and stating: “Fearless Girl is on the move to The New York Stock Exchange. Until she’s there, stand for her. #FearlessGirl.” The hope was that she would “continue the mission of inspiring gender diversity.”32 “We are welcoming her with open arms,” said Betty Liu, executive vice chairwoman of the NYSE.33 According to State Street Global Advisors President and CEO Cyrus Taraporevala, her move closer to the NYSE “will encourage more companies to take action and, more broadly, that she will continue to inspire people from all walks of life on the issue of gender diversity.”34 During the unveiling ceremony for the statue at her new home, New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney noted, “Now instead of staring down the bull, she’s going to be staring down all of business.”35 The move of Fearless Girl to a new location was due, in part, to the traffic and pedestrian safety hazard, on the narrow northern tip of Bowling Green Park, which serves as a median island for a busy portion of Broadway. But in addition, according to Mayor de Blasio, “This move to a new location will ensure that her message and impact will continue to be heard as well as improve access for visitors.”36 So far, only the 250-pound Girl has been moved, although plans to move Charging Bull—all 7,100 pounds of it—closer to the NYSE (and possibly reunited with the Girl) were still in the works in the spring of 2020.37 Although this plan is strongly opposed by the bull’s creator, coincidentally, if it is moved, Charging Bull will actually be returning close to where Di Modica originally placed it nearly thirty years ago.

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Teachable Moments The re-contextualization of Charging Bull by the addition of Fearless Girl has provided multiple opportunities for a teachable moment (an unexpected learning opportunity or unexpected experience that provokes curiosity and renewed insight) for learning something about public art. A teachable moment: the use of public art as obfuscation. The inspiring image of the powerful and determined girl as an example to future generations masked the reality of her initial intended purpose as a marketing campaign, and a campaign that itself masked the realities of the corporate structure of the commissioning entity. What does this mean to the relationship of public art to corporate branding? Today’s technology allows us to be more information-savvy, and it would be advantageous to our society as a whole if those viewing public art do so with an informed vision. Public art always has an intended purpose, whether to recognize an individual, an event, or a cause. But how will the face of public art change when the intended purpose is for the private advantage of a self-serving corporation? A teachable moment: the ephemeral meaning of a work of art once it becomes public. Once a work of art is on display, it is subject to viewer reaction and interpretation, and the historical facts of a work of art can be supplanted. The perception of the viewer becomes the work’s reality. What was meant as a positive image—the bull—becomes an aggressive and negative one by the addition of the girl. This is a reality of public art that artists must consider and in the current age of instant media, these kinds of changes in the meaning of public art can happen more quickly and more broadly than ever before, and even multiple times. Now separated, each work has taken on yet another set of associations—Fearless Girl as the conscience of financial institutions and Charging Bull as representing all forms of excessive authority, as in the recent attack which left a 6-inch-long gash above the bull’s brow caused by a vandal as he cursed President Trump.38 A teachable moment: the debate over removal and modification of controversial public art. Di Modica’s lawyers claimed Fearless Girl is only possible in relation to Charging Bull. “As they wrote in a letter to Mayor de Blasio, ‘Clearly, a deliberate choice was made to exploit and to appropriate Charging Bull through the placement of Fearless Girl.’”39 But, this is not a viable argument any longer. Although making her reputation in relation to Charging Bull, she has been removed from their connection and now challenges the NYSE itself, and in light of New York City never having a female mayor, perhaps her next stop should be City Hall. The removal of controversial Civil War monuments has brought into question the commissioning of public works of art going forward as each commission is viewed through the prism of potential controversy. One recent example is the modification of Meredith Bergmann’s Woman’s Rights Pioneers Monument, destined for Central Park in New York City, due to the outcry that the contribution of African American women in securing the passage of the nineteenth amendment had not been addressed. In response, Bergmann added the figure of Sojourner Truth to those of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

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Another example is the rejection of Paula Zima’s Teddy Roosevelt Monument for San Luis Obispo in California in anticipation of potential criticism of Roosevelt’s attitude toward Native Americans and resulting in San Luis Obispo adopting a “No Human Monuments” policy for their city. Both Charging Bull and Fearless Girl were meant to be temporary but, in response to public demand and political backing, they both stayed well beyond the closing bell. It is doubtful that either sculpture has spoken their last word, providing the opportunity for more teachable moments to come.

Notes Liam Stack, “‘Fearless Girl’ Statue to Stay in Financial District (for Now),” New York Times, March 27, 2017, accessed April 3, 2017, https://nyti.ms/2nFpaYk. 2 Tom McCarthy, “Fearless Girl v Charging Bull: New York’s Biggest Public Art Controversy in Years,” Guardian, April 14, 2017, accessed March 3, 2018, https:// www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/fearless-girl-statue-women-new-yorkbull. 3 Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster, “Introduction,” in Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy, eds. Harriet F. Senie and Sally Webster (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), xi. 4 “History,” Charging Bull, accessed March 31, 2018, http://chargingbull.com/ chargingbull.html. DiModica had presented “gifts” to New York City before: in 1977 several marble statues were placed in front of Rockefeller Center and in 1986 a big bronze horse appeared in front of Lincoln Center. Renae Merle, “‘Fearless Girl’ Ignites Debate about Art, Wall Street and the Lack of Female Executives,” Washington Post, April 20, 2017, accessed March 30, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ economy/fearless-girl-ignites-debate-about-art-wall-street-and-the-lack-of-femaleexecutives/2017/04/20/47ec6d52-239b-11e7-a7b3faff0034e2de_story.html?utm_ term.=.f20139a5bd17. 5 Kieran Crowley and Don Broderick, “‘Heartless’ Wall St. Officials Shoo the Bull,” New York Post, December 16, 1989, 13. 6 “Bah, Humbug! NY Stock Exchange Grinches Can’t Bear Christmas-gift Bull,” New York Post, December 16, 1989, cover; and Crowley and Broderick. 7 “History,” Charging Bull. 8 Although hollow cast, with a skin of less than an inch thick, the bronze sculpture still weighs 3 ½ tons, and at 18 feet long and 11 feet high it is so large that it was cast in separate pieces, welded together, and hand finished. A live video of casting the bronze sculpture is found at Charging Bull, accessed July 1, 2019, http://chargingbull.com/. 9 Harrison Jacobs, “Millions of People from All over the World Have Visited This New York Statue—Here’s Why,” Business Insider, December 14, 2017, accessed March 31, 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-wall-street-charging-bull-new-yorkcity-2017-12. 10 Heritage Auctions (Dallas, Texas) lot description for 14-inch bronze prototype, December 8, 2017. 11 Jacobs, “Millions of People from All over the World Have Visited This New York Statue—Here’s Why.” 1

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12 Linda Massarella and Jeremy Olshan, “Wall Street Bull Artist Knows BS When He Sees It,” New York Post, March 20, 2017, accessed February 28, 2019, http://nypost. com/2017/03/20/that-is-not-a-symbol-wall-street-bull-artist-calls-out-fearlessgirl-statue/. The original plaque read: KNOW THE POWER OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP. SHE MAKES A DIFFERENCE. Jacobs, “Millions of People from All over the World Have Visited This New York Statue—Here’s Why.” Kristen Visbal was a logical choice for the commission as she had already created Girl Chasing Butterflies (1997) at the Merrill Lynch corporate headquarters in Plainsboro, New Jersey, to celebrate Women’s History Month. “About the Artist,” Kristen Visbal, accessed June 28, 2019, www.visbalsculpture.com. 13 “Creating the Fearless Girl.” Fearless Girl is modeled on two children from Delaware. Visbal selected the daughter of a friend as she had “great style and a great stance, and I told her to pretend she was facing a bull” while the other was “a beautiful Latina girl, so everyone could relate to the Fearless Girl.” Dobnik, “Will NYC invite the ‘Fearless Girl’ to stay on Wall Street?” A more complete description of locating her models and achieving the desired posture is presented in “Creating the Fearless Girl,” Fearless Girl, accessed July 1 2019, https://www.fearlessgirl.us/creation/. 14 Sandra E. Garcia, “‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Finds a New Home: At the New York Stock Exchange,” New York Times, December 10, 2018, accessed January 18, 2019, https:// www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/nyregion/fearless-girl-statue-stock-exchange-.html. 15 Ginia Bellafante, “The False Feminism of ‘Fearless Girl,’” New York Times, March 16, 2017, accessed March 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/nyregion/ fearless-firl-statue-manhatttan.html. 16 Michele H. Bogart, Sculpture in Gotham: Art and Urban Renewal in New York City (London: Reaktion Books, 2018), 174. 17 “She Persisted: Moments of Courage, Strength and Rebellion in the Fight for Feminism,” Newsweek, Special ed., March 2018. 18 Ibid. 19 McCarthy, “Fearless Girl v Charging Bull: New York’s Biggest Public Art Controversy in Years.” 20 The #MeToo movement spread on social media following actress Alyssa Milano’s use of the term on Twitter in October 2017, although the phrase, coined by activist Tarana Burke had been used throughout the previous decade. The #Time’sUp movement was founded on January 1, 2018, in reaction to the Weinstein allegations, to provide a platform and funding for those challenging all types of assault and harassment as well as calling out gender inequities in the workplace. 21 Ultimately, it was from the perception that associating with women was risky that another level of discrimination reared its head. “Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women,” according to Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski in their December 2018 article for Bloomsberg. In order to avoid potential accusations of sexual harassment or abuse, men are refusing to meet female employees in rooms without windows or to attend casual after-work or dinner meetings which can be a vital resource for female workers to gain valuable knowledge from “male mentors who can help them climb the ladder” and there are not enough women in senior positions to mentor more junior colleagues. Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski, “Wall Street Rule for the #MeToo Era: Avoid Women at All Cost,” Bloomsberg, December 3, 2018, accessed December 12, 2018, https://www.bloomsberg.com/

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news/articles/2018-12-03/a-wall-street-rule-for-the-metoo-era-avoid-women-at-allcost. 22 Sarah Cascone, “‘Fearless Girl’ Will Stay on Wall Street, and Not Everyone Is Happy,” Artnet, March 27, 2017, accessed March 3, 2018, https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/ fearless-girl-wall-street-art-installation-extended-904112. 23 Lynette Dicey, “Fearless Girl: The Campaign That Went Viral,” BusinessLIVE, April 9, 2018, accessed September 4, 2019, https://www.businesslive.co.za/redzone/newsinsights/2018-04-09-fearless-girl-the-campaign-that-went-viral/. 24 Danielle Wiener-Bronner, “The Fate of ‘Fearless Girl’ Will Be Decided Next Week,” CNN, February 28, 2018, accessed September 13, 2019, https://money.cnn. com/2018/2/23/news/companies/fearless-girl-charging-bull-wall-street-statues/index. html. 25 James Barron, “Wounded by ‘Fearless Girl,’ Creator of ‘Charging Bull’ Wants Her to Move,” New York Times, April 12, 2017, accessed September 4, 2019, https://www. nytimes.com/2017/04/12/nyregion/charging-bull-sculpture-wall-street-fearless-girl. html. 26 Massarella and Olshan, “Wall Street Bull Artist Knows BS When He Sees It.” 27 “The lawyers accused State Street Global [the parent company of State Street Advisors Group] of commissioning ‘Fearless Girl’ as a site-specific work that was conceived with ‘Charging Bull’ in mind. They said that that had improperly commercialized Mr. Di Modica’s statue in violation of its copyright. They asserted that the city had violated his legal rights by issuing permits allowing the four-foottall ‘Fearless Girl’ to stand across from the 11-foot bronze bull without Mr. Di Modica’s permission.” Barron, “Wounded by ‘Fearless Girl,’ Creator of ‘Charging Bull’ Wants Her to Move.” 28 Merle, “‘Fearless Girl’ Ignites Debate about Art, Wall Street and the Lack of Female Executives.” 29 Ibid. 30 Regarding Draw the Blue Line, see, Angelica La Vito, “Protester Who Admitted to Vandalizing Iconic Wall Street Bull Is Arrested,” CNBC Wall Street, September 15, 2017, accessed March 31, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/15/woman-whosaid-she-deumped-blue-paint-on-wall-street-bull-is-arrested.html. Regarding yarn wrapping of Charging Bull, see, Malia Wollan, “Graffiti’s Cozy, Feminine Side,” New York Times, May 18, 2011, accessed March 31, 2018, https://www.nytimes. com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn.html. Regarding the Fearless Girl hats, see, Melia Robinson, “The Statue of a Defiant Girl in Front of the Wall Street Bull Is Now Wearing a Series of ‘Pussy Hats,’” Business Insider, March 8, 2017, accessed March 31, 2018, http://www.businessinsider.com/defiant-girl-statue-wears-pussyhat-international-womens-day-2017-3; and Andrea González-Ramírez, “Wall Street’s ‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Got Transformed into a Trump Supporter,” Refinery 29, March 20, 2017, accessed March 31, 2018, www.refinery29.com/2017/03/146080/fearlessgirl-statue-wall-street-trump-supporters-mega-hats. 31 Artist Alex Gardega installed his Pissing Pug beside Fearless Girl to challenge the “fake corporate feminism” of the work and in support of Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull. Lizzie Crocker, “This Is What Happened When Wall Street’s ‘Fearless Girl’ Met ‘Pissing Pug,’” Daily Beast, May 30, 2017, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www. thedailybeast.com/this-is-what-happened-when-wall-streets-fearless-girl-metpissing-pug.

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32 Liz Moyer, “‘Fearless Girl’ on the Move, but Leaves Footprints for Visitors,” CNBC Wall Street, November 28, 2018, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www.cnbc. com/2018/11/28/fearless-girl-on-the-move-but-leaves-footprints-for-visitors.html. 33 In addition to being executive vice chairwoman of the New York Stock Exchange, Betty Liu was appointed its first female president in 226 years. Sandra E. Garcia, “‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Finds a New Home: At the New York Stock Exchange,” New York Times, December 10, 2018, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www.nytimes. com/2018/12/10/nyregion/fearless-girl-statue-stock-exchange-.html. 34 Rubin Kimmelman, “Gone Girl: Lower Manhattan ‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Is ‘On the Move,’” NPR Business, November 28, 2018, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www. npr.org/2018/11/28/671546407/gone-girl-lower-manhattan-fearless-girl-statue-is-onthe-move. 35 Danielle Wiener-Bronner, “Fearless Girl Installed in Her New Home in Front of the New York Stock Exchange,” CNN Business, December 10, 2018, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/10/business/fearless-girl-moves/index/html. 36 Kimmelman, “Gone Girl: Lower Manhattan ‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Is ‘On the Move.’” 37 The City’s plan experienced a setback May 19, 2020, when Community Board 1, which oversees the Financial District and other parts of Lower Manhattan, unanimously voted against moving Charging Bull to the NYSE. Zachary Small, “New York’s Iconic ‘Charging Bull’ Sculpture Becomes Subject of Fierce Debate among Politicians,” ARTnews, May 22, 2020, accessed May 22, 2020, https://www.artnews. com/art-news/news/new-yorks-charging-bull-move-controversy-1202688237/. 38 Rebecca Tan, “Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull’ Has Been Defaced Again, This Time by a Metal Banjo,” Washington Post, September 9, 2019, accessed January, 28, 2020, https//www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/09/10/wall-streets-charging-bullhas-been-defaced-again-this-time-by-metal-banjo. 39 Ben Rosen, “Can the ‘Charging Bull’ Sculptor Control His Art Work’s Meaning?,” Christian Science Monitor, April 14, 2017, accessed March 31, 2018, https://www. csmonitor.com/USA/society/2017/0414/can-the-charging-bull-sculptor-control-hisartwork-s-meaning.

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The Afterlife of E Pluribus Unum By Laura M. Holzman, Modupe Labode, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

Introduction How can a work of public art that was never fabricated or installed make a lasting mark on the cultural landscape of a city? And what strategies are effective for exploring the central questions of race and civic space, as well as the particular intersections of power structures and inequalities, that were revealed in the wake of a cancelled public art project? This chapter expands the study of Teachable Monuments by considering what can be learned from an absent object—not one that has been removed, but one that was never made in the first place—and how those lessons might engage people in meaningful conversations. We take as our focus the afterlife of E Pluribus Unum (Figure 15.1), a public art project in Indianapolis that was designed in response to a prominent local monument and cancelled in 2011 amid complex public controversy.1 With no physical sculpture to confront people in public space, interventions have attempted to use the commissioning and cancellation of E Pluribus Unum as a platform for larger discussions of race and public art, and as an opportunity for civic engagement. But how effective have they been? This study of the afterlife of the artwork explores how it has been mobilized across physical and virtual spaces of public discourse. By examining several of these interventions, this chapter weighs how—or whether—the lessons of E Pluribus Unum can resonate when the object itself cannot. Learning from E Pluribus Unum, like any monument or public artwork, demands both a deep understanding of local conditions and grappling with its multivalence for diverse constituencies. In the case of an absent work like this one, however, there is no extant object inserting itself into public life or insisting on its place in ongoing discourse. Instead, the work’s significance persists, and even evolves, through proxies such as scholarship, teaching, archives, and a variety of public memory practices. Taken together, the interventions we discuss here provided a variety of communities with multiple points of entry into the issues that surfaced around E Pluribus Unum. The corresponding conversations were made even more challenging by their entanglements with structural racism, ambiguity, contestation, and the intersections of art and politics. We offer these strategies as examples of our ongoing practice of

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Figure 15.1  Digital rendering of Fred Wilson, E Pluribus Unum, (proposed sculpture) 2010. Courtesy of Central Indiana Community Foundation.

public scholarship and how monuments and public art can be used to deepen civic dialogue and engagement.

E Pluribus Unum Renowned artist Fred Wilson developed E Pluribus Unum beginning in 2007, when he was commissioned to create an artwork for the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. Spearheaded by the Central Indiana Community Foundation, the Cultural Trail is a bicycle path and pedestrian walkway that connects cultural districts in and around downtown Indianapolis.2 Wilson hoped to use his work to highlight the absence of African American representation in the city’s public spaces, a goal that the project’s leaders highlighted.3 Employing his signature method of recontextualizing objects to generate new meaning, Wilson proposed creating a new sculpture based on the figure of an African American man who was part of a large sculptural group on the city’s prominent Soldiers and Sailors Monument (Bruno Schmitz, 1902).4 The man is seated, shoeless, and shirtless. His right hand extends upward, holding broken shackles and reaching toward an allegorical figure of Liberty, who does not return his gaze. This figure is part of the “Peace” sculptural group, which represents the end of the Civil War. The African American man’s lack of agency is typical of the depiction of emancipation

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in Civil War monuments as a “gift of freedom” bestowed by benevolent whites, which erased Black people’s long, risky fight to defeat slavery.5 Wilson proposed creating a new sculpture that would feature a full-scale copy of the man rendered in Indiana limestone, echoing the materials of the monument, but rotated so that he would be “self-possessed and looking forward,” and holding a flag composed of smaller flags from contemporary Black nation-states in Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Caribbean.6 As Wilson’s project neared the final stages of the planning phase, it was met with vociferous disapproval from community members, the majority of whom were African American. The protestors wanted to see a representation of Black people that was not rooted in imagery associated with slavery, and they wanted to have been involved more directly in the process of commissioning the artwork. Debate over the sculpture exposed deeply rooted structural inequalities in Indianapolis related to race and representation as well as beliefs about public art related to who decides what it should look like, who pays for it, and where it belongs in the city. After a nearly fouryear process that involved public forums and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the community foundation cancelled Wilson’s commission. Project leaders then launched a new process to commission a public sculpture that would represent the history of African Americans in Indianapolis and that was intended to involve more direct and sustained input from the Black community members who, many felt, were not sufficiently included in the earlier iteration of the project. This second attempt at bringing African American representation to the Cultural Trail produced Talking Wall, a 2015 sculpture by Bernard Williams, which we discuss in detail at the end of this chapter. Protesters and the commissioning agency were eager to put E Pluribus Unum and the controversy around it behind them. At community meetings related to the new artwork, facilitators discouraged discussions of E Pluribus Unum, Fred Wilson, and the protests.7 But despite the efforts to write E Pluribus Unum out of the story of public art in the city, we—and others in Indianapolis—have worked to embed Wilson’s project and lessons learned from it in the city’s cultural memory.

Presence/Absence and the Cancelled Artwork The question of how to learn from absence is not a new one. For example, in 2013, the Tate dedicated an entire web-based exhibition to the theme of lost art from the twentieth century.8 In 2018, historian and museologist Steven Lubar penned an essay reflecting on the many ways in which museums have undertaken the task of “exhibiting absence”—developing exhibitions when “the objects we need to tell stories are lost, stolen, misplaced, unavailable, or just too hard to get and display.”9 Exhibiting absence, as Lubar approaches it, begins with the premise that institutions want to learn from and share objects that are not available. In contrast, the case of E Pluribus Unum shares more in common with examples of marginalized, effaced, and erased history.10 While we (the authors), some of our colleagues, and some of our students remain dedicated to learning from E Pluribus Unum, other individuals and institutions would prefer to

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forget that the project ever happened. With E Pluribus Unum there is both a push to remember and a pull to forget.11 When the community foundation cancelled E Pluribus Unum, it denied the work a physical presence in our city’s landscape. After some initial comments about the project, Wilson has decided neither to talk about it publicly nor to install the work elsewhere. But in our formal and informal teaching activities, we have attempted to bring the artwork and the issues that surround it back into conversations about public art, representation, and Indianapolis’ cultural heritage. Some, like Indianapolis-based curator Sarah Green, find promise in the sculpture’s absence. In an episode for her PBS Digital series The Art Assignment, she observed that “the power of empty pedestals in Wilson’s [exhibition] Mining the Museum back in 1992 was in demonstrating absence [of representations of prominent Black Marylanders in the Maryland Historical Society’s collection]. E Pluribus Unum functions similarly, remaining a strong presence even though you can’t see it—perhaps because you can’t see it.”12 Green’s observation suggests that E Pluribus Unum might not have had as large an impact on public discourse, public memory, and the visual landscape of Indianapolis if the sculpture had been completed. Similarly, art historian Kirk Savage has noted that if one of Wilson’s goals was “to draw public attention to the slave figure on the soldier monument, and to start a discussion about it … his project has already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.”13 While we agree that the project’s cancellation makes it a uniquely interesting point for reflecting on Indianapolis’ visual and cultural landscape, it has failed to be a consistent catalyst for conversation and critique. Even with numerous interventions in the wake of the sculpture’s cancellation (some of which we highlight here), discussions of E Pluribus Unum have been discrete rather than sustained. And, to our knowledge, those conversations have generated limited action. Although people have grappled with the sculpture and the issues it raises, little has changed in the way public art is funded and selected, the representation of African American history and culture in the public sphere, or the way people engage with the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. But because people continue to be drawn to the story of E Pluribus Unum, perhaps the work still has power as a teachable monument, at least in the limited circles in which it continues to circulate. E Pluribus Unum has entered cultural memory. It is mobilized in different contexts at different times. The story of the sculpture, and, therefore, the potential for its lasting impact, surfaces on the internet and in our classes. It has been discussed in publications of local, national, and international scope. For example, the 2016 episode of The Art Assignment dedicated to E Pluribus Unum has over 12,400 views on YouTube. A substantial Wikipedia article written largely by IUPUI Museum Studies graduate students details the project and its cancellation. Academic journals such as Public Art Dialogue and the Indiana Magazine of History have published scholarship on E Pluribus Unum by both Indiana-based and national scholars.14 Still, as an absent object, E Pluribus Unum is not able to visually, materially, and spatially insist that people pay attention. Its absence is convenient for those who want to dismiss or resist the project. Its absence is also problematic for attempts to engage in ongoing conversations that wrestle with the complexities of the cancelled artwork.

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At the same time, through interventions such as publications, public programs, and classroom activities, E Pluribus Unum can resurface and continue to refocus conversations around race, representation, and public art in Indianapolis.

Public Engagement The IUPUI Museum Studies Program places public scholarship at its foundation. Many of the projects we undertake in our research and our teaching revolve around creating scholarship both for and with audiences outside of academia. To build toward this work, undergraduate and graduate students study artists’ critiques of museums as institutions, and faculty teach Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum in a variety of undergraduate and graduate classes. Faculty and students from our program were engaged with the conversations surrounding Wilson’s project for the Cultural Trail from the early days of the project’s launch through the aftermath of its cancellation. When the community foundation announced Wilson’s commission for the Cultural Trail, faculty and students attended community meetings and followed the unfolding events closely. Labode initially hoped to partner with community members to co-create research about Wilson’s engagement with Blackness in public space. However, as the public response to the proposed work became more contentious, her research shifted to a more traditional methodology of observation and archival research around the figure of the African American man on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and race and space in Indianapolis. She also worked with Museum Studies graduate student Maggie Schmidt on two public-facing projects. The first, a short-lived blog called “Monument Circle Project,” was intended to be a way to communicate the research they were conducting on the monument and its meaning in Indianapolis. Schmidt designed a second project, which explored the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in visual culture by using Flickr to curate historical images of the monument and African Americans, with a focus on the early twentieth century. These projects began before E Pluribus Unum was cancelled. From the modest number of social media engagements, it appears that some of this research reached beyond our university; it is unknown, however, whether viewers understood the projects’ connections to the public discussion around E Pluribus Unum. Labode and Schmidt’s research provided foundational material for other projects, most notably the Art, Race, Space symposium. In 2012–13, a group of IUPUI faculty from multiple disciplines, including the authors and two other scholars, received an internal university grant under a thematic funding initiative called “Listening to the City: Identity, Displacement, Renewal” to develop Art, Race, Space. The project took the E Pluribus Unum sculpture as its starting point, but sought, as the proposal articulated, “to go beyond an examination of the visual legacies of racial bondage to understand the fissures it revealed about understandings of race and inequality and to explore more broadly the intersections of art, race, and civic space from interdisciplinary perspectives.”15 More specifically, the organizers of Art, Race, Space wanted to create a forum for a substantive conversation about the underlying issues of race, racism, and the public representation of Blackness

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surfaced by the E Pluribus Unum controversy. The symposium, held in January 2013, featured presentations by IUPUI faculty, invited community members, scholars, and Fred Wilson. We were intentional about creating dynamic opportunities for discussion and inclusive conversation.16 We designed a program with extended time for audience questions and facilitated small group conversations. Students live-tweeted the proceedings, a somewhat new practice at the time.17 We placed large flipcharts around the symposium venue with prompts and space for open-ended comments. To try to reach as broad an audience as possible, we also participated in a local call-in show on public radio,18 filmed the symposium proceedings for later posting on public access TV and YouTube,19 created a website and a Facebook page,20 and most of the papers were published in a special issue of The Indiana Magazine of History, which is publicly available.21 We originally intended to create curricular materials to support the educational use of the symposium videos in high school and college classes, but those were never developed.22 We have, however, incorporated lessons from E Pluribus Unum and Art, Race, Space into our own classrooms.

Classroom Engagement In addition to our public engagement with E Pluribus Unum, we bring the cancelled sculpture project into the courses that we teach. We have examined E Pluribus Unum with graduate and undergraduate students and from various disciplinary perspectives. The absent artwork and the issues that surround it provide a compelling local connection to the broader themes and topics of our anthropology, art history, history, and museum studies classes. As a local case study involving an artist whose work is known to many of our students, it makes for a particularly fitting episode to discuss in our courses. In some instances, we have deliberately incorporated E Pluribus Unum into class discussions and assignments. But E Pluribus Unum has also entered our classrooms more organically. For example, when Holzman’s spring 2019 course on public art in the United States examined representations of emancipation, a student asked about E Pluribus Unum. The student did not remember the details of the episode or the title of Wilson’s proposed artwork, but he knew that there had been a somewhat recent local discussion around the iconography of the freedman, and he wanted to consider it in the context of that day’s course material. Holzman had taught her public art students about E Pluribus Unum in previous years, but that semester she had not planned to address the artwork in her course. The student’s question points to one way that E Pluribus Unum has become embedded in visual culture and cultural memory in Indianapolis: simple word of mouth. In the fall of 2014 Kryder-Reid taught an upper-level undergraduate and graduate elective that addressed issues related to cultural heritage on a local, national, and global scale. Through readings, case studies, discussion, and a semester-long project, eleven students from anthropology and museum studies explored ethical, economic, legal, political, and pragmatic issues related to tangible and intangible heritage with

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the goal of increasing their understanding of the policies, practices, and processes of cultural heritage management. The class examined concepts such as the meaning and value of heritage, epistemology, memory practices, the significance of place, intangible heritage, ownership, and the politics of heritage. A semester-long collaborative project using the visual storytelling platform Prezi allowed students to apply the concepts of critical heritage to create an engaging, publicly accessible story map of the landscape of the IUPUI campus and its environs. The premise of the IUPUI Critical Heritage map was that each student would identify and research a topic related to campus history (broadly construed) that provoked critical thinking about the past in ways that reveal underlying issues of power and inequality. The goal was to share the map publicly to spur critical inquiry and conversation about these enduring issues that are registered, often in hidden ways, in the landscape. One student focused on E Pluribus Unum, and two others included the Wilson sculpture in their broader projects, one examining the role of public art in the city and the other focusing on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which includes several public art installations. The students studying the E Pluribus Unum project had access to primary sources related to the controversy (such as media coverage), materials collected by Labode and her students through their research, and the recorded proceedings of the Art, Race, Space symposium, which had taken place eighteen months earlier. Students created and submitted their individual Prezis, and Kryder-Reid compiled them using as the base image an aerial photograph of downtown Indianapolis including the IUPUI campus. At the end of the semester, they presented the project to a small audience of faculty and peers, and the completed work is publicly available on the Prezi site.23 The collaborative project was intended to mimic some of the principles of deep mapping by overlapping layers of information through time and space to convey critical readings of heritage and power.24 For a one-semester, primarily undergraduate project, those goals were ambitious. Only a few of the students demonstrated a sophisticated integration of critical heritage studies concepts in their presentations. The E Pluribus Unum projects exemplified the challenge of identifying structural and ideological implications of the cultural heritage research. Students’ treatment of E Pluribus Unum was largely descriptive; they documented the proposed artwork, narrated the controversy that followed, and traced the responses including both the Art, Race, Space symposium and the Talking Wall sculpture. It was challenging, however, for the students to think beyond false dichotomies of positive/negative history and to grapple with the complexities of contested heritage. Critical questions posed at the end of one student’s presentation asked, for example, “Is it necessary to remember the struggles that our society has gone through or try to pretend it never happened? … Would it be more appropriate to have a successful African American figure such as Martin Luther King, Jr. rather than the image of a freed slave?” Another student similarly asked, “Should our [cultural] trail include more of our history, and not only the highlights but also the difficult moments?” Most of the students struggled to make connections with broader systems and structures of privilege and power and did not locate themselves in the maps or in the cultural conversations of race and racism that the sculpture provoked. In their personal reflections, students noted that they valued

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learning about aspects of the campus and city history that they had been unaware of, but the students, none of whom self-identified as people of color, did not express a personal stake in the representation and narratives of marginalized communities. The fact that three of the eleven students were drawn to E Pluribus Unum out of all the subjects they could have researched, however, is testimony to the resonance of the project, even as they struggled with how to make sense of it. In the end, the project proved “good to think with,” but in pedagogical hindsight, the students would have benefited from structured in-class conversations about the Wilson project, readings about public art, and other strategies to support making connections between the project and broader systems of power. Even with the mixed success we have had with E Pluribus Unum in our classrooms, we will continue to teach with this project. E Pluribus Unum is especially valuable because it expands the canon of controversial public art and exhibition projects to include a local and differently nuanced example. Our students can learn about meaning making, power, and public debate from the tumultuous stories of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc (1981), John Ahearn’s work for the 44th Precinct in the South Bronx (1991), and other contested cases that have been written about extensively.25 Of course, with any of these examples the geographic and cultural specificity of the controversy can get lost as students try to make sense of the constellation of issues and details, but it is easier to reconnect with those important elements when considering a local topic. Our students may not know what Manhattan looks like or how neighborhoods across New York City differ from one another. But we can send them to the installation site that Wilson proposed for E Pluribus Unum and ask them to consider the implications of placing the sculpture in front of the CityCounty Building, which houses Indianapolis’ criminal courts. We can draw from the understanding of the city’s geographic and cultural landscape that the students already possess, even if that understanding is limited. Teaching with E Pluribus Unum offers an opportunity to think carefully about specific matters of historical, cultural, and geographic significance, and it allows us to help our students build a deeper connection with local visual culture and communities.

Talking Wall Talking Wall (Figure 15.2), the sculpture commissioned for the Cultural Trail after Wilson’s project was cancelled, is both the most and least obvious way to keep learning from E Pluribus Unum. It is a large, screen-like steel structure—a perforated and folded plane in which a balance of flattened black metalwork and ample negative space forms words and symbols that celebrate important Black people from Indianapolis’ history. There are numerous opportunities for viewers to connect with the artwork in person and virtually. The sculpture sits on a stretch of the Cultural Trail that runs through a well-trafficked area of the IUPUI campus. The University exists on land that was previously an historic African American neighborhood displaced when the campus was created in the early 1970s. Significantly, Talking Wall is installed not far from Indiana

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Avenue, which was a vibrant center of Black social life, business, and performing arts during the first half of the twentieth century.26 Talking Wall has become a common stop on African American history tours led by the nearby Indiana State Museum. It appears online in promotional materials for the city, on the local Arts Council’s directory of public art, in a scholarly blog post, and even on Yelp, where a reviewer awarded it four out of five stars.27 Although the dominant interpretations of the piece fail to connect it with E Pluribus Unum, the two works remain linked historically, financially, and institutionally. The specter of E Pluribus Unum lingers in Talking Wall, but only for those who want to find it. With the remaining funds that would have been used to create E Pluribus Unum, the Arts Council of Indianapolis and the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee, two private, non-profit organizations, commissioned a new sculpture designed to bring African American representation to the Cultural Trail. In response to critiques that the selection process that resulted in Wilson’s commission was closed to the public, the agencies worked closely with an ad hoc committee of people interested in the city’s Black history. A series of public meetings helped determine the scope of a call for proposals, which they circulated to artists in spring 2013. That fall, they exhibited scale models of proposed sculptures from five finalists and invited public feedback on the proposals. The committee ultimately selected Bernard Williams’ Talking Wall, which was installed in December 2015.28 In many ways Talking Wall is the opposite of E Pluribus Unum. While Wilson’s proposed sculpture offered a conceptual take on African American power and

Figure 15.2  View of Bernard Williams, Talking Wall, with Indianapolis skyline in background, 2015. Photograph by Laura M. Holzman, 2019.

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representation in Indianapolis, Talking Wall presents an easily legible story about Black accomplishments. “E Pluribus Unum” translates to “out of many, one,” and Wilson’s design adhered to that concept visually, with one single figure standing in for the many. Talking Wall takes an inverse approach, evoking a multiplicity of experiences through multiple subjects. Williams’ sculpture contains representations of several different figures who begin to capture some of the specificity of Black people’s roles in the city’s history. The stories referenced in Talking Wall could be interpreted as examples of individual triumph over the difficult circumstances of white supremacy. For instance, bicycle racer Marshall “Major” Taylor, who spent his youth in Indianapolis, appears as a silhouetted figure riding a bicycle with the initials “M” and “T” in its wheels. Taylor became an international cycling champion in the early twentieth century, despite racist efforts to bar him from participating in many competitions because he was Black. Williams used similar combinations of text and image to recognize other prominent people and organizations with local ties including businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker; jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery; teacher and activist Mary Cable; the 28th Indiana Regiment of US Colored Troops, who fought in the Civil War; and the Negro League baseball team, the Indianapolis Clowns. The sheer number of subjects honored on the wall could also be read as a way for supporters to ensure that these notable Black figures finally get their due, given the lack of confidence that there would be additional monuments or public artworks dedicated to Black people in the future.29 A nearby interpretive sign invites viewers to read Talking Wall as a representation of African American success in sectors including music, sports, business, and education. It makes no mention of the selection process or the cancelled project that preceded it. But when Talking Wall made its debut, commentary from Black community leaders and members of the art community implied a lingering connection between the two artworks because they framed Talking Wall in contrast to E Pluribus Unum. Amos Brown (1950–2015), an African American radio and print journalist who created forums for discussing E Pluribus Unum even as he became a strident critic of the work, wrote of Talking Wall: Finally, Indy got it right in terms of figuring out how to create African-Americanfocused art for the city’s Cultural Trail … The controversy over the [Fred Wilson] statue focused on the larger issue of what happens when whites tried to dictate and stage manage something for Black folks without consulting Black folks. The lesson is when our community is involved, consulted and engaged, the process can work and achieve great results.30

One implication of Brown’s statement is that cultural leaders in the city learned from the experience of E Pluribus Unum, reflected in the different approach they took to commissioning Talking Wall. But the real evidence of learning in this regard would need to be reflected in sustained transformations of the process of commissioning public art in the city, which does not seem to have occurred.

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Anthropologist Paul Mullins, one of the co-organizers of the Art, Race, Space symposium, has interpreted Talking Wall in light of the tensions between connecting the sculpture with and distancing it from E Pluribus Unum. Mullins explains that Talking Wall “strongly gravitates toward reconciliation. That may reflect many peoples’ feelings that the Wilson project’s failures should be left in the past so Talking Wall can celebrate a proud African-American heritage and secure community consensus.”31 Each of these interpretations of Talking Wall is reasonable. They are rooted in analyses of the object’s iconography, history, and stakeholders. By returning to the form of the sculpture and its precise siting on the IUPUI campus, however, we find that Talking Wall can play an even more substantial role in sustaining the critical reflection that E Pluribus Unum sparked. Talking Wall stands on a rectangular concrete pad just a few feet from the Cultural Trail. A walkway extends from the trail to the sculpture, inviting all viewers to approach Talking Wall from the northwest. From this vantage point, a campus parking garage, some academic buildings, and parts of downtown Indianapolis are all visible through the negative space of the sculpture. Negative space is a prominent feature of Talking Wall. It reflects Williams’ creative process, which involves using cut paper to build images. In Talking Wall, the negative space is active space. Viewers who look at the sculpture simultaneously look through it. Both physically and metaphorically, Talking Wall invites its audiences to see Indianapolis through African American history and experience. With such a significant role for negative space, Talking Wall raises important questions about absence. What is missing—from the site, from the Cultural Trail, from the ways that Black people are represented in public art and public space in Indianapolis? It leaves ample room for viewers to look beyond the prominent people represented in the sculpture and consider the everyday people who lived, went to school, and worshipped on the site where the sculpture is installed. When considering absence and Talking Wall, it is difficult to ignore E Pluribus Unum, the object whose absence made Talking Wall possible. Some viewers who look carefully at Talking Wall may come to this interpretation on their own. But it will take additional engagement efforts—in our classrooms, in public forums, and with local cultural organizations— to encourage reading the artwork more frequently within the context of the absent Wilson sculpture and the silenced conversations about race and racism.

Conclusion This inventory of strategies for using E Pluribus Unum as a teachable monument represents a set of activities that have evolved over time in response to our respective research interests, availability of funds, teaching opportunities, and community engagement. We continue to pursue our original goal of involving people in conversations that explore central questions of race and space and the intersections of power and inequality that are revealed through them. Some strategies have been more successful than others, but there is a cumulative weight of all of them. Through public engagement

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and classroom activities, the interventions we discuss here perpetuate the visibility of Wilson’s absent artwork. They continue to build on each other and draw new people into the conversation. In a city that struggles with acknowledging the ongoing role of white supremacy, it would be naive to expect that one public artwork, one monument, or one public humanities event could affect meaningful change. From our ongoing work teaching with E Pluribus Unum, however, we find that there are benefits to making a long-term, multidisciplinary commitment to the study and interpretation of the absent artwork, and that its intangible presence continues to enrich our civic conversations.

Notes 1

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We summarize the E Pluribus Unum story in this chapter. For more details, see Modupe Labode, “Guest Editor’s Introduction,” Indiana Magazine of History 110, no. 1 (2014): 1–9. For more interpretation of the project, see the essays in the special issue of the Indiana Magazine of History (2014), which focuses on the Art, Race, Space symposium; Fred Wilson and Modupe Labode, “Unsafe Ideas, Public Art, and E Pluribus Unum: An Interview with Fred Wilson,” Indiana Magazine of History 108, no. 4 (2012): 383–401; Sierra Rooney, “‘It’s Not about One Statue’: Fred Wilson’s E Pluribus Unum,” Public Art Dialogue 4, no. 2 (2014): 184–200. The Indianapolis Cultural Trail was created by and continues to be operated by private entities. The non-profit organization Indianapolis Cultural Trail, Inc., is responsible for the development and maintenance of the trail. The Cultural Trail was funded through a combination of private donations and federal transportation grants. Public art for the trail was entirely privately funded. As Indianapolis has no established municipal agency or office for funding and administering public art, private entities—both for profit and non-profits—fill this role. Like many American cities, Indianapolis has few public sculptures that depict African Americans. Public images of African Americans include: The Landmark for Peace (Greg Perry and Daniel Edwards, 1995), which includes a double portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy; the Worker’s Memorial (Daniel Edwards, 1995), which depicts an African American man as a laborer; and two “luminaries” on the Glick Peace Trail portion of the Cultural Trail, which depict Booker T. Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010). German architect Bruno Schmitz was the lead designer of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Austrian sculptor Rudolf Schwarz carved the sculptural groups dedicated to “War” (unveiled 1898) and “Peace” (unveiled 1899). Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Fred Wilson in Labode, “Unsafe Ideas,” 393. Modupe Labode, personal observation, 2012. Jennifer Mundy, Lost Art: Missing Artworks of the Twentieth Century (London: Tate Publishing, 2013). Details about the Tate’s virtual exhibition, The Gallery of Lost Art, are also available at https://www.tate.org.uk/about-us/projects/gallery-lost-art, accessed July 1, 2019. Steven Lubar, “Exhibiting Absence,” Medium, December 2, 2018, accessed July 1, 2019, https://medium.com/@lubar/exhibiting-absence-36c5552613ba.

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10 See, for example, discussions of the erasure of Indigenous and queer history: Christine M. Koggel, “Epistemic Injustice in a Settler Nation: Canada’s History of Erasing, Silencing, Marginalizing,” Journal of Global Ethics 14, no. 2 (2018): 240–51; and Mattie Udora Richardson, “No More Secrets, No More Lies: African American History and Compulsory Heterosexuality,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 3 (2003): 63–76. 11 It is important to note that people interested in learning from E Pluribus Unum have drawn divergent lessons from the experience. This includes those who viewed the cancellation of E Pluribus Unum as an important victory and did not want to dwell on the episode once it was over. In this chapter, we are not attempting to document the full range of interpretations of the cancellation of E Pluribus Unum. 12 Sarah Green in “Public Art Study: Fred Wilson’s E Pluribus Unum,” The Art Assignment, PBS Digital, August 25, 2016, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.pbs.org/ video/art-assignment-fred-wilson/(5:58). 13 Kirk Savage, “E Pluribus Unum,” Kirk Savage (blog), April 25, 2011, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.kirksavage.pitt.edu/?p=180. 14 On E Pluribus Unum’s national and international scope: The Art Assignment, 2016 (over 12,400 views on YouTube as of June 10, 2019); “E Pluribus Unum (Wilson),” Wikipedia, last edited January 6, 2019. Labode, Indiana Magazine of History, 2010; Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, “Speaking of Influence: A Monument’s Invisible Man,” Art21 Magazine, February 20, 2011, accessed July 1, 2019, http://magazine.art21. org/2011/02/22/speaking-of-influence-a-monument%E2%80%99s-invisible-man/; Rooney, “It’s Not about One Statue,” 2014; Phillip Brian Harper, Abstractionist Aesthetics: Artistic Form and Social Critique in African American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 4–9. 15 Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Art, Race, and Civic Space,” proposal for IUPUI Arts and Humanities Grant, February 28, 2012, 3. 16 Modupe Labode, Laura Holzman, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, “Hybrid Discourse: Exploring Art, Race, and Space in Indianapolis,” Public: A Journal of Imagining America 1, no. 1–2 (2013), accessed July 1, 2019, http://public.imaginingamerica.org/ blog/article/hybrid-discourse-exploring-art-race-and-space-in-indianapolis/. 17 Archived at https://twitter.com/artracespace, accessed July 1, 2019. 18 No Limits, WFYI Public Radio, January 24, 2013, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www. wfyi.org/programs/no-limits/radio/No-Limits-IUPUI-Symposium-January-24-2013. 19 Art, Race, Space Symposium, School of Liberal Arts, IUPUI, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaB-5LB3XNNbykHHp-ED_QW44g_ KnsX4E. 20 “Art, Race, Space,” Facebook, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/ ArtRaceSpace; and “Art, Race Space,” IUPUI School of Liberal Arts (via internet archive), accessed July 1, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20170821041908/ and https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/artracespace/. 21 The special issue of the Indiana Magazine of History dedicated to E Pluribus Unum is available for free via Indiana University Scholar Works, accessed July 1, 2019, https:// scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/issue/view/1434. 22 The interventions discussed in this section are not a complete accounting of our public engagement activities, which also included, for example, discussing the artwork at a 2017 meeting of an ongoing public seminar on art and ethics that draws

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Teachable Monuments participants from across our region who have varying degrees of personal and professional interest in public art. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, “IUPUI Critical Heritage Map,” Prezi, accessed July 1, 2019, https://prezi.com/yi2zammvg6ye/iupui-critical-heritage-map-v-12-8-14/. David J. Bodenhamer, John Corrigan, and Trevor M. Harris, eds., Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015). See, for example, “John Ahearn on the Bronx Bronzes and Happier Tales,” in Dialogues in Public Art, ed. Tom Finkelpearl (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 80–101; “John Symes: Fighting the Bronx Bronzes,” in Finkelpearl (2001), 102–9; Jane Kramer, Whose Art Is It? (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 56–99; and Harriet Senie, The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). Paul Mullins, “Marketing in a Multicultural Neighborhood: An Archaeology of Corner Stores in the Urban Midwest,” Historical Archaeology 42, no. 1 (2008): 88–96. “Talking Wall,” Visit Indy, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.visitindy.com/ indianapolis-talking-wall; “Talking Wall,” Indy Arts Guide, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.indyartsguide.org/public-art/talking-wall/; Paul Mullins, “Silence and Civility at the Talking Wall: Race and Public Art,” Archaeology and Material Culture (blog), December 21, 2015, accessed July 1, 2019, https://paulmullins.wordpress. com/2015/12/21/silence-and-civility-at-the-talking-wall-race-and-public-art/; and “Talking Wall,” Yelp, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.yelp.com/biz/talking-wallindianapolis. Arts Council of Indianapolis, “African American Art on the Cultural Trail,” October 2013, accessed July 1, 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20131222024147/ and http:// indyarts.org/art-on-the-trail/. Bernard Williams in No Limits, WFYI Indianapolis, January 21, 2016, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.wfyi.org/programs/no-limits/radio/the-newest-addition-to-theindianapolis-cultural-trail. (37:30). As Dell Upton has observed, “A monument … has to present its case in a compacted manner, pressing familiar images and metaphors into its service. Such conventional imagery is necessary for monuments to be legible to a broad public,” Dell Upton, What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 9. Amos Brown, “Mayor Ballard Treats Blacks as Tokens in His Pre-K Plan Ad Campaign,” Indianapolis Recorder, September 11, 2014, accessed July 1, 2019, http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/opinion/article_5f1304c2-39c5-11e4-b7af83de9d4f37dd.html. Paul Mullins, “Silence and Civility at the Talking Wall: Race and Public Art,” Archaeology and Material Culture (blog), December 21, 2015, accessed July 1, 2019, https://paulmullins.wordpress.com/2015/12/21/silence-and-civility-at-the-talkingwall-race-and-public-art/.

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Unforeseen Controversy: Reconciliation and ReContextualization of Wartime Atrocities through “Comfort Women” Memorials in the United States By Jung-Sil Lee

Introduction What lessons could wartime sex slaves of the Second World War transmit to contemporary society? What educational value could the memorials built to commemorate wartime victims provide in the context of modern women’s issues? In the face of controversy, what meaningful lessons can the public and future generations learn from the memorials? Considering their purpose is to remember, preserve, and grieve the history of the women and girls victimized seven decades ago in the IndoPacific region, are their stories still relevant in the United States today? This chapter will examine the educational validity and reconciliatory function of “comfort women” memorials that have been erected in the United States over the last decade. These memorials reflect and reconcile difficult historical facts while also trying to heal the scars of past atrocities of the war by creating a site for pilgrimage. During the Asia-Pacific War, Imperial Japan forcibly drafted vast numbers of girls and women from its colonized and occupied countries into military prostitution. They were known euphemistically as “comfort women,”1 and their number has been estimated from as low as 50,000 to as high as 400,000.2 “Comfort Stations” were first established in Shanghai around 1932, and the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 prompted the Japanese military to adopt the policy of establishing military brothels in various occupied locations.3 The majority of “comfort women” were between their mid-teens and early twenties, and they were repeatedly raped and abused by Japanese military personnel.4 The method of recruitment was to deceive women with false promises of employment in other countries, violent abduction, or human trafficking from destitute families.5 The purpose of “comfort station” brothels was to “comfort and relieve” the fear and stress of the soldiers through sexual servitude.6 “Comfort Women” memorials have been controversial due to the disagreement of their veracity. The memorials are in more than ten different cities throughout the United States, and range from modest stone slabs to elaborate figurative statues of girls

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that emphasize the young age when they were trafficked. The purpose of the memorials is to honor the victims’ perseverance and courage, to educate viewers on the history of a wartime atrocity marked by the mass violation of women’s rights, and to ensure it will never happen again. While the “comfort women” and their supporters demand an official apology and legal reparations from Japan for their the Second World Warera war crimes, the memorials have provoked harsh criticism from Japanese hardline nationalist and revisionist factions. This chapter examines the underlying contested politics of “comfort women” memorials in the United States and the ways in which activists have dealt with different responses to the memorials. These often-heated exchanges have generated a new discourse and transformed the function of the memorial into an educational tool for American audiences.

Why Remember “Comfort Women” in the United States? There is no concise, singular answer for why this event in Asian history has gained such prominence and generated debate in the United States in the twenty-first century. In December 1992, after the groundbreaking testimony of Korean former sex slave Keum-ju Hwang in Virginia, the non-profit organization, Washington Coalition for Comfort Women issues (WCCW), was founded.7 At the time, very few Americans had heard about “comfort women.” Hwang’s testimony on Fox Channel 5 had an explosive impact, leading to public demonstrations, conferences, exhibitions, and publications. The US Department of Justice on December 4, 1996 responded by barring “16 Japanese war criminals” from entering the United States.8 Since then, the WCCW has strived to raise awareness and persuade congressional members to submit resolutions to define the American stance against the historical atrocity. In 2007, Representative Mike Honda, along with 167 co-sponsored representatives, passed House Resolution 121 after a congressional hearing of three former “comfort women.”9 The topic subsequently gained global attention, which paved the way for discussions about broader women’s rights issues.10 This eventually convinced the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights that the “comfort women” history was an appropriate case to include in the 1996 report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women. The Committee concluded that the term “comfort women” did not reflect the suffering of multiple rapes on an everyday basis and severe physical abuse that women victims had to endure during their forced prostitution and sexual subjugation in wartime. They proposed the phrase “military sexual slaves” as representing a much more accurate and appropriate terminology.11

The First “Comfort Women” Memorial in the United States Three years after the passage of House Resolution 121, the first “comfort women” memorial was built on October 23, 2010, in Palisades Park, New Jersey, through the

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efforts of Korean American Civic Empowerment and painter Steven Cavallo (Figure 16.1). Deputy Mayor of Palisades Park Jason Kim explained that the memorial “fosters empathy toward ‘comfort women,’ and educating younger generations about atrocious crimes against humanity.”12 He asserted that the site in front of the public library was an ideal location to historicize the issue and legitimize its relevance to American history. Despite his intentions, the monument sparked a powder keg of controversy when several members of the Japanese Parliament (the National Diet) visiting the town requested the memorial be removed.13 The site was soon vandalized with a wooden stake. Cavallo recalled how some local residents expressed their resentment toward the memorial saying that it would foster anti-Japanese sentiments within the community. Kim witnessed, however, the strong healing power for both the victims and other visitors, which manifested in ritualized gestures of bringing flowers and touching the stone slab in mourning. The Palisades memorial became the first pilgrimage site for former “comfort women” and their supporters, paving the way for many more memorials to be built in the United States and other nations hoping for “reconciliation and peace building.”14 The memorial and its attendant controversy also triggered the passage of another “comfort women” resolution, the Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 124 for the state of New Jersey, under the sponsorship of Senator Loretta Weinberg in September 2012. However, instead of a peaceful reconciliation, the Palisades memorial ignited a socalled “History War” that attempted to disclaim the veracity of the “comfort women’s”

Figure 16.1  The first “Comfort Women” Memorial, Palisade Park Public Library, New Jersey, 2010. Courtesy of Steven Cavallo.

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testimonies. Japanese right-wing supporters denied that the Japanese government had committed war crimes, claiming that the women were not forcefully conscripted but were “well-paid and voluntary prostitutes.”15 The term “History War” became widely known after the Japanese daily newspaper Sankei Shimbun started to publish a serialized column titled “History War” in which the author claimed that there were three major enemies of the Japanese state who instigated this war: China, Korea, and the Asahi Newspaper, which had acknowledged the “comfort women” history for the first time within Japan.16 The rationale was that these three enemies were trying to degrade and taint the reputation of Japan in the eyes of the global community, and Japan should fight back by spreading counter-narratives of the “true” version of history. The major groups and figureheads behind the “History Wars” were either mainland Japanese or Japanese who lived in America, and not Japanese Americans, few of whom even knew about the memorial or the historical facts.17 Japanese American activist and scholar Emi Koyama was surprised to see a newspaper article titled “Japanese Americans Are against Comfort Women Memorial,” which purported that “comfort women” memorials caused hate crimes and shame against Japanese Americans. In a subsequent study, Koyama found no instances of hate crimes or discrimination against Japanese Americans because of “comfort women” memorials.18 In fact, numerous Japanese American organizations, such as the National Coalition for Redress/ Reparations and the Japanese American Citizens League, actively joined and supported the building of the Statue of Peace memorial in Glendale, the fourth “comfort women” memorial in the United States.

Is the Statue of Peace Peaceful? Statue of Peace (Statue of Girl) was first erected in Seoul, South Korea, on December 14, 2011, in front of the Japanese Embassy to commemorate the thousandth Wednesday demonstration by the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan.19 The Korean Council has supported surviving victims, demanding their lawful rights and reparations from the Japanese government for the past thirty years. Among their efforts is a demonstration in front of Japanese Embassy held every Wednesday since January 1992. The “Wednesday Demonstrations is a place for solidarity between citizens, activists, and the victims, a lively venue for the education on history, a platform for peace and women’s human rights, bringing people together regardless of their gender, age, borders, and ideologies.”20 The site offers not only a place of redress for the victim’s painful past but a stage for multiple reconciliatory performances, cultural showcases, memorialization, and building solidarity that has been expanded worldwide, with people in sixty cities in twenty-three different countries participating in demonstrations. Dr. Elizabeth Son noticed, “Through this regular demonstration, the women invoked various discourses regarding human rights, intergenerational community building, and peacemaking to broaden the historical, geographical, and political relevance of the ‘comfort women’ movement.”21

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The erection of Statue of Peace, designed by sculptor couple Seo-kyung Kim and Eun-sung Kim in 2011, was the culmination of the theatrical demonstrations. Two years later, in July 2013, a cast of the Statue of Peace was erected in Glendale, California, the first replica of the Seoul statue to be built outside of Korea. Replicas of Statues of Peace have since been erected in 102 sites in Korea, and seven outside of Korea, in Canada (2015), Germany (2017, 2020), United States (2013–20), China (2016), and Australia (2016).22 The Korean American group, 121 Coalition of California, which originally formed to support House Resolution 121 in 2007, initiated the Statue of Peace in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Resolution and to proclaim “Comfort Women Day” in Glendale in 2012. The Korean American Forum of California (KAFC) was created to manage the commission and to identify a site. With support from the city planning commissioner of Glendale Lee Chang-yeop, KAFC erected the memorial in the park of the Glendale Public Library on July 30, 2013.23 Statue of Peace features a life-sized bronze sculpture of a girl sitting in a chair, accompanied by a second, empty chair standing for the survivors who have died of old age without having yet witnessed the fulfillment of their call for justice (Figure 16.2). The total height is just 5 feet, and without a high pedestal, viewers can engage the girl, whether sitting or standing right next to her. The sculptors encouraged the

Figure 16.2  Seo-kyung Kim and Eun-sung Kim, Statue of Peace, Glendale, California, 2013. Courtesy of Phyllis Kim © Korean American Forum of California.

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viewer’s physical proximity and contact with the statue in order to evoke audience’s empathy with the victims, and visitors often adorn the girl’s neck with flower wreaths, scarfs, necklaces, and hats. The girl represents a Korean girl, as she wears a modified Korean traditional garment called a hanbok. Initially the artists had intended to depict the figure of an old woman—the age of the surviving “comfort women” today—in the memorial, but they changed the design to that of a young girl to emphasize the brutal nature of the rapes. In honor of the “grandmothers,” the artists included a shadow of an aged victim near the ground behind the seated figure of the girl. The paired image of the young girl and her shadow future-self connects the past and the present, alluding to the timelessness of the “comfort women’s” mental and emotional trauma.24 The butterfly in her shadow symbolizes the metamorphosis from victim (cocoon) to activist (butterfly). The meaning of butterfly has multiple cultural connotations that entailed further significances.25

Controversies Surrounding Statue of Peace From the beginning, the Glendale memorial faced strong opposition. Members of the city council, who were responsible for approving the memorial plan, received thousands of emails and phone calls objecting to the proposed statue. The opposition primarily came from the Japanese Consul General of Los Angeles and two major Japanese right-wing groups, Nadeshiko Action and Happy Science. Founded by Yumiko Yamamoto, the former secretary general and vice president of the extremist anti-Korean group Zaitokukai, Nadeshiko Action (Japanese Women for Justice and Peace) is a group dedicated to denying the history of the “comfort women.” Nadeshiko Action mobilizes campaigns against the “comfort women” movement outside of Japan in the United States, Australia, Canada, and other countries.26 Happy Science is a Japanese religious organization founded in the 1980s by Ryuho Okawa, who claims to be the incarnation of the supreme being. Along with the group’s attempt to enter electoral politics, they promote far-right nationalist political views, including military expansion and historical revisionism.27 The increased pressure from Japanese groups who disclaimed the truth of the “comfort women” did not hinder the consensus formed by the Glendale city council members, who approved the memorial for Glendale’s Central Park. As council member Laura Friedman explained, “Whether they were considered prostitutes at the time or forced, to me, is a moot argument because there is no such thing as a willing 13-year-old prostitute.”28 The controversy surrounding Statue of Peace in Glendale and other “comfort women” memorials in the United States did not die down. In the four years after the statue’s erection in Glendale, Japanese politicians continued to call for the city to remove the memorial, and three Japanese delegations staged public protests at the memorial for the US media. Yoshiko Matsura, a city assemblywoman from the Suginami Ward in Tokyo, said that the delegations were concerned about the statue’s effect on Japan’s reputation in the United States, adding that the mature topics etched on the monument’s

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plaque were not appropriate for a public park where children visit.29 In 2014, Michiko Gingery, a Glendale resident, and Koichi Mera, a Los Angeles resident, and the GAHTUS Corporation (Global Alliance for Historical Truth) filed a lawsuit against the city of Glendale to demand its removal.30 The suit suggested that Japanese Americans would suffer “irreparable injury” from “feelings of exclusion, discomfort, and anger” if the memorial was not removed.31 GAHT claimed that “this issue [is] being used to create a negative image of Japan, Japanese citizens, and Japanese Americans,” by exhuming past wrongdoings.32 The plaintiffs claimed that by installing the statue, Glendale infringed upon the federal government’s exclusive power to conduct foreign affairs and caused Japanese residents to avoid Central Park because the statue made them feel excluded. On August 11, 2014, US District Court Judge Percy Anderson upheld the Statue of Peace in Glendale Park and dismissed the lawsuit based on the conclusion that the memorial does not cause any harm, and Glendale did not break any laws. Through the process of the lawsuit, the KAFC called upon the support of activist communities, including feminist and Japanese American groups, along with an effective media campaign that foregrounded public statements of “comfort women” survivors from Korea. The fight over the Glendale memorial contributed to raise public awareness of the “comfort women” history. After the positive ruling, the KAFC continued their efforts of public education by creating an educational program.

Educational Initiatives and Ongoing Campaigns The upswell of efforts to educate the public and future generations about “comfort women” came not just as a result of the creation of these memorials, but also due to the increased Japanese pressure on American history textbooks to rewrite controversial details about the war.33 Triggered by the Glendale memorial controversy, public interest regarding “comfort women” increased in California. This resulted in the San Francisco Unified School District’s inclusion of a “comfort women” unit in their curriculum in 2016, and the California Education Board’s adoption of the issue in the California High School’s History-Social Science curriculum guideline in 2016.34 The recommended curriculum covers the definition of “comfort women” and the number of victims. The “comfort women” unit marked the first proposal to teach what has been a longcontentious political issue in East Asia in the US high school classrooms and paved the way for further discussions. The guideline recommended that the subject of “comfort women” be taught to high schoolers as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery, and one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the twentieth century. Bill Honing, chair of the History-Social Science subject matter committee, said “the issue would be a valuable starting point for students to research and discuss the present-day problem of human trafficking.”35 Following the curriculum revision, the Korean American Forum of California produced the Teacher’s Resource Series, a guidebook for teaching the subject of “comfort women” to high schoolers. The book justifies the importance of the subject by suggesting that “‘comfort women’ cases are not different from any other historical atrocities like American slavery, the Armenian genocide, and the Holocaust,

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to examine the lessons of the painful past and prevent similar tragedies in the future.”36 The high school teaching resource includes documents from the archives of the House of Sharing, where former “comfort women” survivors reside, an introduction to several memorials in the United States, the inscription from the Glendale Statue of Peace, a full Inquiry Design Model (IDM)-style blueprint and lesson plan, primary resources such as House Resolution 121, victims’ testimonies, and activists’ op-ed articles.

The Globalized Impact of the “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco On September 22, 2017, another “comfort women” memorial was unveiled in San Francisco under the leadership of Eric Mar, former San Francisco city supervisor, and the memorial committee co-chairs, retired Chinese San Francisco Superior Court judge Lillian Sing and Julie Tang. Sing and Tang were activists of the Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition, a group that formed partially in response to Chinese American Iris Chang’s book The Rape of Nanking.37 It was a bestselling account of the brutal but forgotten massacres when the Japanese army destroyed China’s capital city on the eve of the Second World War. The Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) was founded in San Francisco to support the two chairs, and the KAFC joined them in initiating the “comfort women” memorial project and requesting the permission from the San Francisco city council for the memorial building. Korean American, Chinese American, Filipino American, and Japanese American communities joined too. On September 22, 2015, the Board of Supervisors held the meeting to decide whether or not to pass the resolution. Opponents to the project called former “comfort woman” Yong-soo Lee, a “well-payed prostitute” in her presence. In reaction to these remarks, former San Francisco City supervisor, David Campos said three times in his closing statement: “Shame on you.” The Resolution No. 342–15, which charged the city and county of San Francisco to establish a memorial for “comfort women” and to educate the community about stopping global human trafficking of women and girls, was passed unanimously.38 The memorial committee awarded the commission to British sculptor Steven Whyte, who won the open competition with his design entitled Women’s Column of Strength. The sculpture features three girls—Chinese, Korean, and Filipino “comfort women” victims—standing in a circle atop a soaring cylindrical steel base. “Shown holding hands, the women form a circle that symbolizes their firm solidarity with sexual abuse survivors.”39 In the brochure for the unveiling ceremony, the sculptor explained that the girl’s position atop a 5-foot tall pedestal indicates: The narrow column represents how they are precariously atop their imprisoned state, yet their toes are right on the edge, symbolizing how the confinement of their memories also serves as an impetus to escape their fears … the raised height of the women declares that they will no longer have their story hidden in shame. Instead, their bravery and perseverance demand acknowledgment. Staring down at visitors

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to the park, each of the women wears a resolute expression and an unyielding gaze.40

On the ground stands a statue of Hak-soon Kim, who was the first “comfort women” to break the silence. Kim’s public testimony galvanized the global “comfort women” activist movement. The girls stand amidst the busy San Francisco downtown traffic in their respective traditional garments, in silent but staunch defiance. The sculptor said that we have all heard that history is written by the victors. We know that this can lead to mistruths and to a history that is myopic, unbalanced, and incorrect … as a society we are just beginning to learn these lessons; we as artists have an important role to play in making sure these lessons are reflected in the way we change the landscape of our communities.41

Sing and Tang explained in the ceremony, “Through our transnational, multiethnic solidarity, we are also resolved to restore justice to those whose lives and suffering have been erased by nationalist politics or expediency.” The “comfort women” survivors represent the experience of all victimized women during wartime marked by sexual assault and trauma (Figure 16.3).

Figure 16.3 Steven Whyte, Women’s Column of Strength, St. Mary’s Square Annex, San Francisco, California, 2017. Courtesy of Judith Mirkinson © Comfort Women Justice Coalition. Courtesy of Education for Social Justice Foundation.

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Judith Mirkinson, president of CWJC, stated the universal resonance of the memorial: We are thinking of those in our communities who have been forced into sex trafficking, of the Yazidi women, the women in Syria, in Congo, and in Juarez, Mexico, and all those living near military bases. We are also thinking of those who suffered from sexual violence in the past, during the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of indigenous people … We pledge to continue our struggle against all forms of sexual violence, and for an end to the sexism, racism, colonialism, militarization, and war that fuel it.42

Once unveiled, San Francisco’s memorial gained widespread attention, leading to yet another heated controversy between the Japanese government and the memorial supporters. A spokesman for Japan’s Foreign Ministry said the statue was “regrettable and incompatible with the position and efforts of Japanese government.”43 Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura declared an end to the sixty-year-old sister city relationship with San Francisco and, in 2018, he finally terminated the bondage because of the city’s support of the “comfort women” memorial.44 Educational initiatives intensified. Mirkinson stated the relevancy of the statue in relation to the contemporary #MeToo movement. In part, the American interest in “comfort women” may be due to the increased awareness and conversations about sexual assault and sex trafficking in recent years. The dark history and pain of the “comfort women” are not simply an issue of the past but serve as a reflection of the atrocities that continue to plague modern society: rape, sexual assault, sex trafficking, domestic violence, and war-related violence. In recognition of this enduring significance, the California’s State Board of Education approved a new History-Social Framework for California Public Schools that included a section on “comfort women” in the Second World War. The San Francisco Board of Education “Comfort Women” History Resolution No. 158–25A1 calls for the inclusion of the history of “comfort women” in its curriculum to educate the community about the harmful effects of sex trafficking in its historical and modernday context for the purpose of preventing and protecting the youth community from sexual exploitation and trafficking.45 Sung-sook Sohn, Ross Lowe, and Nancy M. Lee founded the Education for Social Justice Foundation in 2017 in response to the needs of education and published “Comfort Women History and Issues: Teacher (Student) Resource Guide” (2018), which included historical background, primary documents, lesson plans, and worksheets on the memorial to help students determine its critical elements, purpose, and effectiveness.

Conclusion The stakeholders involved with erecting the memorials were able to leverage the controversy surrounding their inception to educate the public about “comfort women” history. The supporters insisted that “comfort women” memorials are not

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designed to defame or humiliate Japan but to commemorate the resiliency of “comfort women” victims and to raise awareness of sexual violence and human trafficking in the present. However, the presence of the memorial has multiple repercussions. Art historian Sierra Rooney acknowledges that “‘comfort women’ memorials intended to shame and its capacity to shame can be a powerful tool, one that can force statesponsored redress … and forces Japan to confront its self-imposed historical amnesia. As such … the Statue of Peace evinces a public reckoning with a troubling history that might have easily been forgotten or overlooked by the global community.”46 Likewise, the sculptors mentioned that the objective of the Statue of Peace was “to make the Japanese government uncomfortable by stimulating their conscience and inaction.”47 If the Japanese government continues to deny the “comfort women” history, it will only trigger more protest, civic activism, and memorial building. With the surge of feminist and human rights movement of the present, the “comfort women” issue is gaining traction globally. These memorials, with their physical presence in public sphere, are effective tools in disseminating “comfort women” history and creating public dialogue despite the controversy. The resulting civic discourses and educational initiatives act as a calling ground where peace and reconciliation can be achieved between perpetrator and victim.

Notes 1

2 3

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“Comfort women” is a controversial term as victims never meant to comfort anybody. The term was originated from Japanese brothel industry. Because of the controversy, the UN has recommended to use the “enforced sex slaves,” while survivors generally preferred to be called “halmoni” (meaning grandmother in Korean), a respectful position and affectionate term in Asian countries. This chapter, however, uses the term “comfort women” because past archival documents recorded them with such a term. Caroline Norma, The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). Peipei Qui, Su Zhilian, and Chen Lifei, Chinese Comfort Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 37–42. Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, trans. Suzanne O’Brien (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 43–51, 91. “Japanese, American, and Dutch official documents have confirmed the existence of military comfort stations in the following areas: China, Hong Kong, French Indochina, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, Thailand, New Guinea, the Japanese Okinawan archipelago, the Bonin Islands, Hokkaido, the Kurile Islands, and Sakhalin.” Chin-Sung Chung, “Korean Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan,” in True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, ed. Keith Howard (London: Cassell, 1995), 16–19. Sarah Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008): 107, 139–40.

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Teachable Monuments The purpose of the establishment of comfort stations was to prevent prevailing rapes around the troops, sexually transmitted diseases, leakage of confidential information, and to encourage militant sprits of soldiers. Yoshimi Yoshiaki, 42–75. A year before Kum-ju Hwang, Hak-soon Kim bravely came forward to testify in public that she had been forcibly taken as a sex slave by the Japanese military. Since then, a groundswell of public support for the “comfort women” ensued both in Korea and around the world. Department of Justice, “Suspected Japanese War Criminals Placed on ‘Watch List’ of Excludable Aliens: First Time Japanese War Crime Suspects Have Been Placed on List,” press conference, December 3, 1996, accessed December 17, 2016, https://www. justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/1996/Dec96/574crm.htm. Before 2007, there were ongoing efforts to draft earlier incarnations of the resolution bolstered by a continuous string of hearings, protests, and media publications. Roxana Tyron, “Korean American Seek Resolution on Sex Slavery,” The Hill, September 27, 2006, accessed August 16, 2013, https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/2375korean-americans-seek-resolution-on-sex-slavery. Mary M. McCarthy, “How the Japan-Korea ‘Comfort Women’ Debate Plays Out in the US,” The Diplomat, August 4, 2017, accessed July 4, 2018, https://thediplomat. com/2017/08/how-the-japan-korea-comfort-women-debate-plays-out-in-the-us/. United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, “Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, in Accordance with Commission on Human Rights Resolution 1994/45, Report on the Mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery in Wartime,” January 4, 1996, accessed February 28, 2017, http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/commission/ country52/53-add1.htm. Office of Deputy Mayor, Jason Kim, in the fourth anniversary ceremony catalog, Come from the Shadows: Art and Writings, Palisades Park Public Library, October 23, 2014. Kirk Semple, “In New Jersey, Memorial for ‘Comfort Women’ Deepens Old Animosity,” New York Times, May 18, 2012, accessed August 16, 2017, https://www. nytimes.com/2012/05/19/nyregion/monument-in-palisades-park-nj-irritatesjapanese-officials.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh. Lisa Schirch, Ritual and Symbol in Peacebuilding (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2005), 16–17. Onozawa Akane, “The Comfort Women and State Prostitution,” Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus 10, no. 1 (2018): 16. Ikuhito Hata, Yoshiko Sakurai, and Tsutomu Nishioka, History Wars: Japan-False Indictment of the Century (Tokyo: Sankei Shimbun Publications, 2015), 8. Mera Koichi established The Institute of Japan Revival, Study Group for Japan’s Rebirth, on modern Japanese history by “comfort women” deniers. Emi Koyama examined their activities in detail in her booklet Against Japanese “Comfort Women” Denialism in the U.S.: Introduction to “Comfort Women” Controversy (Portland: Confluere Publications, 2015); and her recent book chapter, “Attack on Comfort Women Memorial in the U.S.” in Comfort Women Overseas, ed. Tomomi Yamaguchi (Seoul: Amoonhak Publisher, 2017), 63–111. Emi Koyama, “The U.S. as ‘Major Battleground’ for ‘Comfort Woman’ Revisionism: The Screening of Scottsboro Girls at Central Washington University,” Asia Pacific Journal 13, no. 22 (2015): 6.

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19 The Korean Council changed the name to “The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan” in June 2016, “About Us,” Korean Council for Justice and Reembrace, accessed April 23, 2020, http:// womenandwar.net/kr/about-us/. 20 The Wednesday demonstration was listed in March 2002 in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest rally on a single theme. Adam Bemma, “South Korea: World’s Longest Protest over Comfort Women,” Aljazeera, September 7, 2017; and Yoon Mee hyang, Wednesday for Twenty Years (Seoul: Woongjin Junior, 2010). 21 Elizabeth W. Son, Embodied Reckonings: “Comfort Women,” Performance, and Transpacific Redress (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018), 31. 22 Changrok Kim et al., “Research Report for the Establishment of National Japanese Military Comfort Women Research Institute and History Museum,” South Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, May 2018, 35. 23 Phyllis Kim, interview with author, September 23, 2017, San Francisco, California. 24 For the detailed symbolism of every details of the Statue of Peace, see Seo-kyung Kim and Eun-sung Kim, The Promise in the Empty Chair (Seoul: Mal publisher, 2016), 64–103. 25 Butterfly symbolism in Korea is diverse and auspicious: beginning of spring, symbol of the wisdom, Buddhist use as auspicious reception and practice of “Butterfly ritual dance,” metaphor of spirit who died unfairly, and Shamanic use as the symbol of “spirit.” Appropriating butterfly as their symbol, “comfort women” victims, Bok-dong Kim and Won-ok Gil established the Nabi (Butterfly) Fund, in 2012, the international tour campaign in solidarity with “comfort women” calls itself “The Butterfly Dream”; and “Hope Butterfly” is an international coalition of “comfort women” advocates. 26 FeND (Japan–US Feminist Network for Decolonization) is a network of activists and scholars resisting both Japanese and US colonialisms. Accessed April 23, 2020, http:// fendnow.org/encyclopedia/nadeshiko-action/. 27 Happy Science’s former San Francisco director and current New York director Yoshi Taguchi spoke at the City and County of San Francisco Board of Supervisors against the proposed “comfort women” memorial in the city in summer 2015. Ibid. 28 Author interview with Phyllis Kim, September 20, 2017, San Francisco, California. 29 Brittany Levine, “Third Japanese Delegation Bashes Comfort Women Statue,” Los Angeles Times, January 16, 2014, accessed August 2, 2017, https://www.latimes. com/socal/glendale-news-press/news/tn-gnp-third-japanese-delegation-bashescomfortwomen-statue-20140116-story.html. 30 Complain for Declaratory and injunctive relief. Case no. 2:14- cv-1291 by Michiko Shiota Gingery, Koichi Mera, GAHT-US Corporation. 31 Eamonn Fingleton, “Disgusting! Cry Legal Experts: Is This the Lowest a Top U.S. Law Firm Has Ever Stooped?” Forbes, April 13, 2014, accessed August 20, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2014/04/13/disgustingcry-some-legal-experts-is-this-the-lowest-a-prominent-u-s-law-firm-has-everstooped/#1647576468b3; and Brittany Levine, “Lawsuit Seeks Removal of Glendale’s ‘Comfort Women’ Statue,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 2014, accessed July 16, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-xpm-2014-feb-22-la-me-ln-glendalecomfort-women-statue-sparks-lawsuit-20140222-story.html. 32 Arin Mikailian, “Comfort Women Statue Opponents File Appeal Ruling against Removing Glendale Comfort Women Statue,” Los Angeles Times, September 5, 2014,

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Teachable Monuments accessed August 10, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-news-press/tngnp-me-comfort-women-statue-opponents-file-appeal-20140905-story.html. In response to the demand of Japanese diplomats of deleting the sections of Japan’s war history and “comfort women” from the McGraw-Hill textbook, a group of historians led by professor Alexis Dudden made a public statement against this revisionism. Alexis Dudden and K. Mizoguchi, “Abe’s Violent Denial: Japan’s Prime Minister and the ‘Comfort Women,’” Asia-Pacific Journal 5, no. 3 (2007), accessed February 1, 2016, https://apjjf.org/-Alexis-Dudden/2368/article.html. Tom Torlakson, “Choosing Instructional Materials Based on the New History-Social Science Framework,” California Department of Education Letter, accessed January 26, 2018, https://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/el/le/yr18ltr0126.asp. Ibid., 4. Korean American Forum of California and Comfort Women Justice Coalition, Curriculum and Resources for “Comfort Women” Education for High School, 2018. Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Perseus Books, 1997). San Francisco “Comfort Women” Memorial Resolution (Resolution No. 342–15), Tails Resolution File No. 150764, accessed January 26, 2018, https://sfbos.org/ftp/ uploadedfiles/bdsupvrs/resolutions15/r0342-15.pdf. Author interview with Steven Whyte, September 22, 2017, unveiling ceremony, San Francisco, California. Steven Whyte and Ellen Wilson, “Women’s Column of Strength: Artistic and Social Involvement in Designing the Comfort Women Memorial in San Francisco,” in Comfort Women History and Issues: Teachers’ Resource Guide, 2nd ed., Education for Social Justice Foundation (2018), 54. Ibid., 55. Judith Mirkinson, in the brochure for the unveiling ceremony, “Memory, Resilience, Justice,” September 22, 2017, St. Mary’s Square Annex, San Francisco, California. Adam Taylor, “Why Japan Is Losing Its Battle against Statues of Colonial-Era ‘Comfort Women,’” Washington Post, September 21, 2017, accessed October 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/09/21/why-japan-islosing-its-battle-against-statues-of-colonial-era-comfort-women/. Jacey Fortin, “‘Comfort Women’ Statue in San Francisco Leads a Japanese City to Cut Ties,” New York Times, November 25, 2017, accessed December 3, 2017, https://www. ny times.com/2017/11/25/world/asia/comfort-women-statue.html. San Francisco Board of Education, “In Support of Countering Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children,” October 13, 2015, Resolution No. 158–25A1, accessed March 7, 2016, https://archive.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd-staff/ about-SFUSD/files/resolutions/158-25A1.pdf. Sierra Rooney, “The Politics of Shame: The Glendale Comfort Women Memorial and the Complications of Transnational Commemorations,” De Arte 53, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 97. Interview with the author, September 2017, Virginia.

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Free History Lessons: Contextualizing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina By Matthew Champagne, Katie Schinabeck, and Sarah A. M. Soleim

Introduction After the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 resulted in Heather Heyer’s murder, members of Historians for a Better Future (HBF) did not know how passersby would react to the educational programming we planned in front of the Confederate monuments outside the State Capitol building in Raleigh, North Carolina. During our so-called Free History Lessons, we held banners with quotes from historians that connected Confederate monuments to white supremacy and passed out histories of specific monuments behind us that articulated this same point through historical facts. Not everyone was a willing participant. When one of our educators approached a passerby with an offer of a free historical brochure, he received a decided: “F**k you.” Throughout the event, our educators had many challenging engagements but ultimately reported finding common ground with most individuals, and some pedestrians even expressed encouragement. This wide range of responses speaks to the emotional investment stakeholders have in the history that these monuments represent. Free History Lessons seeks to show ways in which educators can use their skills to moderate such charged emotions with facts. As an organization of public historians, HBF draws on historical knowledge to critically engage with contemporary issues in our community. We formed in 2016 after the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) announced a parade in downtown Raleigh to celebrate the election of Donald Trump. We quickly organized a teach-in, an informal educational discussion on a contemporary issue, on the history of the KKK in North Carolina. In the following months, we committed our organization to using history as a resource to help our community address societal inequities. In 2017 we continued this mission in response to debates over the cultural and political power of Confederate monuments. This took on renewed local significance when Governor Roy Cooper initiated an effort to remove Confederate monuments on the State Capitol grounds. Recognizing a need for historical context and accuracy in the heated debates about the monuments, HBF developed an educational program that explicitly connected the history of Confederate monuments to white supremacy.

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Confederate Monuments and Public Memory in North Carolina Immediately after the Civil War, white North Carolinians built Confederate monuments in cemeteries to grieve dead Confederate soldiers. The wives and daughters of Confederate soldiers spearheaded this initiative largely through the Ladies’ Memorial Association.1 By the late 1870s, these women were instrumental in disseminating the Lost Cause mythology, which claimed the Confederacy fought for “states’ rights” and not, as was explicitly stated by Confederate political leaders at the time of their secession from the Union, the preservation of slavery.2 Although the South lost the Civil War, they achieved a significant political and cultural victory in the late nineteenth century by crafting the false Lost Cause narrative that diminished slavery as the primary cause of secession and promoted the erroneous idea that the antebellum South was a peaceful place where enslaved peoples worked happily for their masters. As the Lost Cause became comfortably entrenched in societal norms of the late nineteenth century, America’s popular culture became saturated with depictions of an idealized antebellum South that emphasized the benevolence of enslavers, a civilization seemingly “gone with the wind.”3 As white Southerners tried to lay claim to the history and meaning of the Confederate cause, emancipation provided African Americans opportunities to craft commemorative traditions that challenged the narratives of white supremacy, Black inferiority, and antebellum nostalgia constructed by white Southerners.4 Beginning in the 1860s, annual Emancipation Day celebrations held throughout the country established the presence of African Americans in civic spaces.5 In Raleigh, African Americans organized the North Carolina Colored Industrial Fair in 1879. Fair organizers used this popular event to demonstrate the contributions of African Americans to North Carolina through industrial, agricultural, and cultural exhibits.6 While often limited by a lack of financial resources and governmental support, these public celebrations challenged attempts by white Southerners to construct a historical memory that excluded the achievements of African Americans.7 In the 1890s, monumentation, and history more broadly, became a powerful tool for the Democratic Party in North Carolina to reclaim power in state government and, thus, reassert white supremacy.8 A “Fusion” coalition of Republicans and Populists had secured control of the General Assembly in the post-bellum period and threatened the control of Democrats by broadening the electorate to include men of all races.9 In response, Democrats led a campaign to divide white and Black voters within the “Fusion” coalition. On speaking tours, Democratic politicians narrated a history of Anglo-Saxon supremacy and blamed the failings of Reconstruction on African Americans who Democrats claimed were unfit for political leadership. In 1898, after the citizens of Wilmington freely elected a majority African American municipal government, North Carolina Democrats went so far as to violently seize power through a coup d’état.10 Amid these campaigns, North Carolinians erected the first of three Confederate monuments on the State Capitol grounds in Raleigh. In 1892 the Ladies’ Memorial Association began to campaign for the creation of a monument in honor of deceased Confederate soldiers.11 While white women led a public fundraising effort, the General Assembly appropriated $20,000 for monument construction, a decision met with

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Republican and Populist criticism.12 At the statue’s unveiling in 1895, Alfred M. Waddell (a leader of the Wilmington Coup) emphasized the righteousness of Confederate soldiers and criticized Northern portrayals of the war by likening Confederates to eighteenth-century American revolutionaries, implying that the Confederate cause was the heir to American patriotism.13 Another monument at the State Capitol, the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, visualized the central role white women assumed in the preservation of Confederate history and white supremacy (Figure 17.1).14 The monument depicts a woman sitting with her grandson who is holding a sword while she regales him with wartime stories.15 At the statue’s unveiling in 1914, Daniel Harvey Hill (the son of a Confederate general by the same name) argued that during the war, “the mistress was the greatest slave on the plantation” and spun misleading stories of white women who worked side by side with those they enslaved.16 In the early twentieth century, white North Carolinians frequently elevated stories of colonial figures like Virginia Dare (the daughter of English settlers of the Roanoke colony and the first English child born in America) as a testament to America’s Anglo-Saxon inheritance.17 Hill’s interpretation demonstrated how celebrations of white womanhood were imbedded in visions of an idealized antebellum past.18 The final monument erected at the State Capitol during the heyday of Confederate monumentation was a 75-foot-tall obelisk that towered over the chambers where state legislators enshrined white supremacy within the state constitution by disenfranchising African American voters through a poll tax and literacy test (Figure 17.2). The monument features an infantryman, who stands atop the monument, an

Figure 17.1  Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, 2017. Courtesy of Matthew Champagne.

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Figure 17.2  Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the North Carolina State Capitol obelisk, 2017. Courtesy of Matthew Champagne.

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artillery soldier and a cavalryman, who flank the obelisk, and two naval cannons at the monument’s base. While the exterior of the monument commemorates the common soldier, a capsule entombed in the monument’s cornerstone holds mementos from Confederate General Robert E. Lee.19 With nearly a hundred Confederate monuments spread throughout the state, contemporary North Carolinians are quite familiar with debates over monuments and public memory. A vocal minority has routinely called over the years for greater contextualization and understanding of how these monuments actively preserve and perpetuate white supremacy in our communities. In June 2015, only ten days after the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Bree Newsome, an artist and activist from Charlotte, North Carolina, scaled a flagpole to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State Capitol building. Upon her descent, she was promptly arrested by authorities. In response to heightened debates over Confederate iconography after the violence in Charleston, the North Carolina General Assembly amended the Historic Artifact Management and Patriotism Act. The new amendment provided the North Carolina Historical Commission (an appointed body) sole authority over removing, relocating, or altering all monuments, memorials, and works of art owned by the state or on public property. It prohibited the removal of objects of remembrance “to a museum, cemetery, or mausoleum unless it was originally placed at such a location” and required that the legislature approve any attempt to remove or alter monuments.20 Days after the events in Charlottesville in 2017, residents of Durham, North Carolina, literally took the matter into their own hands and toppled a Confederate monument that had stood in front of the county courthouse since 1924. In addition, students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill staged a sit-in and reignited over fifty years of protest against “Silent Sam,” a statue of a Confederate soldier erected on campus in 1913.21 A year later, the night before the fall semester began, students tore Silent Sam off of his pedestal. Once again, the debate over Confederate monumentation and public memory was front and center in our community.

Free History Lessons The response by North Carolinians to the events in Charleston and Charlottesville made it clear that HBF needed to address Confederate monuments by bringing concrete historical knowledge to public debates in a program we called Free History Lessons. We wanted to use our historical skills to counteract the ways in which the honor of the Confederacy has been cemented in public spaces as “southern heritage.” In addition, we aimed to empower residents to educate themselves about these monuments. As we planned our Free History Lessons, we decided our objectives were twofold: (1) articulate the connection between Confederate monuments and white supremacy, and (2) curate a visually impactful event and message that social media would sustain once the event itself had moved on. We intended to intersect these goals with our larger

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mission of using historical knowledge to facilitate a dialogue between public historians and community stakeholders. Free History Lessons took place in front of two Confederate monuments at the State Capitol: respectively, the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy (hereafter referred to as the Women of the Confederacy Monument) and the obelisk. During our two events, “silent sentinels” held banners that quoted historians on the relationship between Confederate monuments and white supremacy. Meanwhile, “educators” distributed educational pamphlets about the history of Confederate monuments and engaged passersby in dialogues about the role of Confederate monuments in society. The banners drew on the decorative style of the First World War “Silent Sentinels” who protested for the enfranchisement of white women. From 1917 to 1919, Silent Sentinels held banners designed to pressure President Wilson to support women’s suffrage, often using the President’s own words ironically (Figure 17.3). While our program intentionally incorporated the visual rhetoric of the Silent Sentinels, we were disturbed by the fact that the original Sentinels sacrificed the vote for women of color to further their own agenda of enfranchising white women.22 Nonetheless, we believed that we could disavow the way the Silent Sentinels contributed to the emboldening of white supremacy in the early twentieth century while also appropriating the parts of their protest that worked, such as their visibly large and confrontational banners. The militancy of the Sentinels echoed our desired optics: historians, resolute in the truth.23 The Silent Sentinels partly adopted their militarism because of the violence they experienced at the hands of police and pedestrians.24 The violence enacted against the original Silent Sentinels and the demonstrators at Charlottesville greatly resonated with us as we planned our events. In preparation, about fifteen HBF members who planned on participating in this or future events attended a self-defense training that considered the landscape of the monuments where we were hosting our Free History

Figure 17.3  Silent Sentinels protesting at the White House, 1917. Courtesy of the Library of

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Lessons. Our sentinels learned how to use the poles of their banners for self-defense, and we minimally advertised the event out of concern that it could prompt a tense counter-protest. For the event itself, each participant had a designated role. One person who was tasked with managing the event stood a distance away to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. The sentinels and educators were all prepared to pack up and leave immediately on the manager’s cue. We could never be said to have military precision, but we were organized. We were not the only ones who saw the potential for violence. Police became aware of our event through the process of obtaining a permit and were in steady contact with us beforehand. They were a heavy presence on the day of our first event. If our preparation and the police response seem excessive, it is a testament to the threat of violence surrounding the issue of Confederate monuments. Our signs operated like museum labels by contextualizing and providing information about Confederate monuments by quoting and attributing historians and public historians. For example, one banner referenced Manisha Sinha: “NOT ONLY WAS THE CONFEDERACY FOUNDED ON … RACIAL INEQUALITY, BUT MONUMENTS TO IT AROSE AT MOMENTS … WHEN SOUTHERNERS SOUGHT TO DEFEND WHITE SUPREMACY.—MANISHA SINHA, HISTORIAN.”25 We included the credentials of those we quoted as an assertion of our authority as historians to interpret and educate. However, the focus on asserting authority presented a challenge to our organization’s larger mission to promote “dialogue.” The objective of Free History Lessons was didactic: we were less interested in dialogue than asserting an authoritative voice into the existing public dialogue. Put another way, we did not plan on asking passersby what Confederate monuments meant to them. Instead, we intended to use historical evidence to tell them that Confederate monuments are symbols of white supremacy. Despite veering from our organization’s larger mission, we felt the program’s objective was appropriate because it served a need for historical evidence in the debates about Confederate monuments. This public need could best be met through sharing historical research developed through the skillset of historians. HBF read the secondary literature and consulted with several historians in the field. We researched and interpreted primary documents for ourselves, and we followed the debates on monumentation in our area and elsewhere. We knew that when public historians discuss difficult histories with audiences, preparation, structure, and historical authority can channel flared emotions into productive conversation.26 As public historians, we realized that our responsibility to the difficult histories of our community was as citizens and experts. Despite our training, our audience questioned our professional authority. During one interaction, an older man gestured to our signs and handouts and asked why our history was “better” than the history his grandfather told him. The man shared that he was taught that North Carolinian men fought for states’ rights, not slavery. After acknowledging individual soldiers’ ambivalence toward war and slavery, an educator agreed that oral histories are valuable historical sources, but then asked what experiences might have shaped his grandfather’s stories. After briefly discussing

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how one’s education, race, and class shape our experiences and memory, the educator suggested he explore some of the primary sources cited on the handout, which he promised he would. This short conversation demonstrated that, at the very least, our presence and decision to evoke our authority as historians created an opportunity to discuss how historical narratives are crafted. The concept of shared authority encapsulates our objective, as well as the shifting dynamic between inviting dialogue and asserting expertise. Shared authority is the meaning exchanged between trained historians and the communities with whom they engage. Historians share authority when they acknowledge that community members decide how they interpret information presented to them.27 Put simply, there is no shared knowledge without honest dialogue. The goal of our educators was to impart historical knowledge, but we needed to listen to our community if we expected them to listen to us. Our goals served us well as we conversed with our community during our Free History Lessons. Take one conversation between an educator and a man who engaged in discussion. He started by asserting his point of view: “I think these monuments should stay. I think they’re all works of art and that they should stay up.” This became an opportunity for discussion rooted in historical knowledge about the Confederate monuments. The educator responded, “A lot of the Confederate monuments in North Carolina are mass produced, so they don’t have claims of being unique artworks. Would you oppose those monuments being taken down then?” “Well … but the ones here [at the State Capitol grounds]. They’re works of art.” “Okay. A lot of people think that Confederate monuments should not be put in public places, like the State Capitol grounds, because they are symbols of white supremacy. Some people say that they would be better off in museums where they could be interpreted more fully, including for their artistic value. Would you agree with that?” The man said something about the government taxing people too much before hurrying away. This conversation demonstrates the way in which we engaged in dialogue while rooting our own talking points in historical fact. The man engaging with our educator left the conversation with a new historical fact (many monuments were mass produced), and new information about the Confederate monument debate (that monuments could be moved to museums rather than simply destroyed). Changing someone’s mind in one conversation is very difficult, especially if you are not willing to listen to their concerns and opinions. Shared authority does not mean accepting “alternative facts” but listening to differing viewpoints and using them as a starting point for a conversation.

Reflection on Practice Although we kept a continuity in our roles, banners, and relative location, we noticed a great difference in audience reactions and participation between our first and second

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Free History Lessons. Our first event at the Women of the Confederacy Monument was partly successful because of the location: we faced the street and sidewalk so passersby could easily read our signs. Our close proximity to the monument itself also facilitated the communication of our message. Overall, reactions indicated more emotion but also a more precise comprehension of our message. Even so, some challenged our choice of monument, with one passerby specifically asking why we chose to “pick on the women.” This passerby’s question revealed and created an opportunity to discuss how notions of the innocent and apolitical white woman are internalized and served as a reminder of the biases that audiences bring to their own understandings of history. However, during our second teaching event, we were unable to face the street, and pedestrians approached from multiple angles and distances, stretching our educators and sentinels farther apart than at the first event. Consequently, many individuals engaged with us more hesitantly and suspiciously. Educators had many fruitful engagements but also overheard passersby expressing confusion about our message. Several people assumed we advocated keeping the monuments. These comments made clear to us that people must be able to read the signs. But, perhaps the signs themselves were the problem. We hoped our banners would initiate conversations, but the old-fashioned aesthetic of our design seemed to suggest to some that we supported the old-fashioned, white supremacist values of the people who erected these monuments. We hope it is abundantly clear that this was not our intention. In the beginning, the banners seemed appropriate to our goals. The stakes were big, so too were the banners. We intended the size of our banners to emphasize the role of historians in the public sphere, as the original Silent Sentinels sought to emphasize the role of women in the public sphere (Figure 17.4). While quick reactions can be good, in this case, they did not always produce the results we intended. In the case of Free History Lessons, we should have thought more critically about whether we could divorce the visual rhetoric of the original Silent Sentinel banners from the blatant racism of their time. In truth, our signs were aggressive because we intended them to be aggressive. Acts that disturb the status quo are always “aggressive.” We did not intend our provocation, however, to perpetuate historical trauma. Had we made clearer distinctions from the visual rhetoric conventions of the early twentieth century and, thus, its connection with white supremacy, perhaps some passersby would not have misinterpreted our intentions. For HBF, our measure of success for Free History Lessons relied on social media. More specifically, we set out to make Free History Lessons such a visually impactful event that social media users would further disseminate the connection between Confederate statues and white supremacy on their social media pages through liking, sharing, and retweeting images from these events. We carefully planned our demonstration to optimize visual optics. Our banners, the placement of educators and sentinels, and the physical location of the monument itself were all critical decisions because we intended the composite image of all these factors to extend the work of Free History Lessons beyond the physical event.

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Figure 17.4  Historians for a Better Future demonstrating near the Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, 2017. Courtesy of Matthew Champagne.

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In reality, this skeleton of a social media plan did not yield the results we hoped. That is not to say our social media presence did not prove fruitful, however. Thanks to the modest amount of engagement that our posts received from social media users, UNC-TV asked representatives from HBF to join a roundtable discussion on Confederate monuments that included scholars and activists at the forefront of the debate.28 In addition, the National Council on Public History asked us to write a blog post for their History@Work series, and this chapter is the latest iteration of us sustaining the work of Free History Lessons despite having concluded the program. Moreover, we have participated in question and answer forums with other public historians interested in integrating the work of Free History Lessons into their own communities. Currently the local humanities council of Durham, North Carolina, has come the closest to replicating Free History Lessons. In August 2017 after protestors toppled the Confederate monument in front of the Durham County Courthouse, the local humanities council asked HBF to collaborate on an event. However, the program needed adjustments because there was no actual monument about which to educate people. In place of the physical monument, the humanities council displayed posters of the statue during a popular night of open galleries and art events in downtown Durham. One poster showed the monument before it was torn down, and another poster depicted its now-empty pedestal. On the latter poster, the humanities council encouraged passersby to post notes describing what they thought should happen to the pedestal or the toppled monument. Because Durham’s humanities council wanted to use historical evidence to explain the connection between Confederate monuments and white supremacy, the event remained primarily educational and didactic. However, allowing passersby to voice their opinions by posting notes made the dialogue component more significant than in our first Free History Lessons. Adjusting the model of Free History Lessons to meet the needs of Durham’s humanities council also resulted in higher levels of engagement. Hosting the event in the heart of downtown Raleigh on a Friday afternoon, most of the participants were older, white professionals. Durham hosted their Free History Lessons on a Friday evening in a town square near local shops and restaurants rather than at the location of the empty pedestal in front of the courthouse. This atmosphere yielded a more ethnically diverse audience who were also younger and stopped for longer periods of time to engage educators. Initially, we thought the lack of a Confederate monument would hinder the ability of Durham’s humanities council to host Free History Lessons. But they adjusted the program to meet their needs, and the lack of monument perhaps made passersby more willing to engage. Considering the connection of these monuments to white supremacy, it is understandable that some passersby did not engage us in downtown Raleigh because of the monument’s imposing physical presence. Ultimately, HBF met some of our goals for the Free History Lessons, learned from outcomes we did not anticipate, and made the role of the historian more visible in debates on white supremacy and racial justice. We produced a program that fused historical knowledge with a contemporary issue in a way that invited other communities to replicate this event to meet their needs. Our goal of nurturing historian-led

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community dialogue beyond the city of Raleigh was perhaps our sincerest goal and one we intend to bring to fruition.

Notes Karen L. Cox, Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 26. 2 See Alexander Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech,” March 21, 1861, reproduced in The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Documentary Reader, ed. Stanley Harrold (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 59–64. 3 David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 260. 4 W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Class of Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 57. 5 Freedom’s Jubilee: Celebration of the 31st Anniversary of the Proclamation of Emancipation at Raleigh, N.C., January 1, 1894 (Raleigh, NC: Barnes Bros, 1894), State Library of North Carolina, accessed May 31, 2019, http://digital.ncdcr.gov/ cdm/ref/collection/p249901coll37/id/17183; H.L. Pike, Address at the Celebration of Emancipation Day, Delivered by Col. H.L. Pike at Raleigh, N.C., January 1870 (Raleigh, NC: Standard Steam Book and Job Print, 1870), State Library of North Carolina, accessed May 31, 2019, http://digital.ncdcr.gov/cdm/ref/collection/p249901coll37/ id/17202; Brundage, The Southern Past, 95–6. 6 John H. Haley, Charles N. Hunter and Race Relations in North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 23. 7 Brundage, The Southern Past, 60–61. 8 Catherine W. Bishir, “Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915,” Southern Cultures 1, no. 1 (1993): 8. 9 The North Carolina Populist Party emerged out of the North Carolina Farmers’ Alliance an organization of rural, white North Carolinians who left the Democratic Party in the election of 1892. As the Populist Party grew in strength, many Republican leaders advocated cooperation. The coalition of Republican and Populist parties united rural North Carolinians, laborers, and nearly all African American voters. See Michael Honey, “Class, Race, and Power in the New South: Racial Violence and the Delusions of White Supremacy,” in Democracy Betrayed, eds. David S. Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). 10 For the most comprehensive account of the white supremacy campaign in North Carolina, see Cecelski and Tyson, eds., Democracy Betrayed. 11 “North Carolina’s Soldier and the Banquet to the Men Who Put Him There,” News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), April 10, 1895, 5. 12 “Confederate Monument Appropriation Bill Passes the House,” News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), March 8, 1895; and Catherine W. Bishir, “North Carolina’s Union Square,” from Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina, 2012, accessed May 31, 2019, https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/features/essays/bishir_two/. 13 Alfred Waddell, Address at the Unveiling of the Confederate Monument at Raleigh, N. C. (Wilmington: LeGwin Bros, 1895); Bishir, “Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915,” 60–1. 1

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14 W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “White Women and the Politics of Historical Memory in the New South, 1880–1920,” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, eds. Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 117–18; Catherine W. Bishir, “‘A Strong Force of Ladies’: Women, Politics, and Confederate Memorial Associations in NineteenthCentury Raleigh,” in Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and Landscapes of Southern Memory, eds. Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003), 22–3. 15 The Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy was created in 1914 by sculptors Augustus Lukeman and Johnpaul Harris. The architect was Henry Bacon and the foundry was Jno. Williams, Inc. in New York, New York. 16 Daniel Harvey Hill, “The Women of the Confederacy,” in Addresses at the Unveiling of the Memorial to the North Carolina Women of the Confederacy (Raleigh, NC: Edwards & Broughton Printing Co., 1914), 14. 17 Bishir, “Landmarks of Power: Building a Southern Past, 1885–1915,” 68, 81–3. 18 Ibid., 18–19. 19 “The Corner Stone Exercises,” Charlotte Democrat (Charlotte, NC) May 25, 1894, 2; “Confederate Monument, State Capitol, Raleigh,” from Commemorative Landscapes, accessed May 31, 2019, https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/106/. 20 S.L. 2015–170, Sess. of 2015–16 (N.C. 2015), accessed May 31, 2019, https://www. ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2015&BillID=s22. 21 In the 1960s, students began to contest “Silent Sam,” pointing to Julian Carr’s dedication speech in which he praised Confederate soldier who “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race” and boasted of whipping an enslaved woman a hundred yards from the statute’s location. Al Ribak, “‘Silent Sam’ Should Leave,” Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, NC), March 17, 1965, 2; Louise Jennings, “Silent Sam’s Dignity Restored,” Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, NC), April 9, 1968, 5; Sharon E. Brown, “South Could Rise if It Would Break from Racial Past,” Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, NC), April 23, 1968, 2; Speech by Julian Shakespeare Carr at the Unveiling Confederate Monument at University, from the Julian Shakespeare Carr Papers #141, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 22 Jen McDaneld, “White Suffragist Dis/Entitlement: The Revolution and the Rhetoric of Racism,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 30, no. 2 (2013): 243–64. 23 Belinda A. Stillion Southard, “Militancy, Power, and Identity: The Silent Sentinels as Women Fighting for Political Voice,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 10, no. 3 (2007): 399–417. 24 Ibid., 407. 25 Manisha Sinha, “What Those Monuments Stand For,” New York Daily News, August 18, 2017. 26 Cary Carson, “Colonial Williamsburg and the Practice of Interpretive Planning in American History Museums,” Public Historian 20 (1998): 11–51. 27 Michael Frisch, “From a Shared Authority to the Digital Kitchen, and Back,” in Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World, eds. Bill Adair, Benjamin Filene, and Laura Koloski (Philadelphia: The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, 2011), 127. 28 “Focus On: Confederate Monuments,” UNCTV, November 15, 2017, accessed November 23, 2017, https://www.unctv.org/watch/unctv-originals/focus-on/.

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Future History: New Monumentality in Old Public Spaces An Interview with Artist Kenseth Armstead by María F. Carrascal

Introduction This chapter presents a dialogue on art and public space between New York artist, Kenseth Armstead, and architect and scholar, María F. Carrascal. The focus of the exchange is on Armstead’s sculpture, Washington 20/20/20 (Figure 18.1), which was on view in the fall of 2018 at the George Washington statue in Union Square. While this work was displayed, Armstead was one of the panelists in “Shaping the City,” the 2018 Municipal Art Society (MAS) Summit for New York City, organized for the Society’s 125th Anniversary. Carrascal, who specializes in creative urban regeneration, was at the time visiting scholar at MAS. Coincidentally, MAS raised the funds to preserve the George Washington statue that Armstead’s work engaged in critique. Armstead participated in the panel, “Art: Beyond the City Beautiful,” which explored the current role of public art in the city in advancing principles of inclusion. The panel included legendary conceptual artist, Mel Chin; artist and professor, Rose DeSiano; director of the Greater Des Moines Public Art Foundation, M. Jessica Rowe; and New Yorker staff writer, Vinson Cunningham.

The Need of a New Monumentality Washington 20/20/20 embodies the idea that art is able to refocus the lens of history. It uses the equestrian statue of George Washington, a key component of the first wave of monumentality in the city of New York, to critique itself. This sculpture, created by Henry Kirke Brown and placed in Union Square in 1856, was the first milestone in the history of New York public art production.1 It inaugurated a period of city beautification through the implementation of public statuary that commemorated its history of power and major achievements by influential figures. The intervention offered by Armstead at this monument expanded and complemented its original meaning. The approach presents a new stage of art-regeneration in historic public spaces: a new monumentality over the old.

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Figure 18.1  Kenseth Armstead, Washington 20/20/20, Union Square, New York, 2018, perforated steel, angle iron, wood, enamel paint, tar and feathers, 12 ft x 12 ft x 8 ft. Photograph by Liz Ligon.

In 1943, architect and urban planner José Luis Sert, historian and architecture critic Sigfried Giedion, and artist and filmmaker Fernand Léger, who were all in close contact while living in New York, published “Nine Points on Monumentality,” which was followed by Giedion’s “The Need for a New Monumentality.”2 In their famous manifesto they called for a revival of cities’ ability to “evoke” contemporary society through new monuments.

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Armstead’s work embraces this idea and goes a step further to consider the reactivation of existing public monuments. Without destroying the old, Washington 20/20/20 confronts and augments public history. This “counter-monument” ultimately makes evident the need for another “new monumentality” that focuses on the existing corpus of old monuments and celebrates all the historical voices hidden in and around them. Unearthing multiple layers of storytelling not only honors forgotten historical voices but also serves as a guide for an integrated future. This text frames Armstead’s work in a conceptual context that makes a claim for an updated relationship between the historical monument and today’s public space, built over inclusive bases. It begins with a reflection by Armstead on the process of creating Washington 20/20/20, followed by the interview itself, which is articulated through four sections: inclusion, education, process, and participation and engagement.

Washington 20/20/20: An Artist’s Reflection on Process Addressing the legacy of George Washington in a public space is complicated. He’s a heroic figure with huge flaws. How do you approach an icon and critique him respectfully? The approach to engage the site developed from an exceptional eighteenthcentury exchange. In 1775 Phillis Wheatley sent Washington a poem titled aptly, “To His Excellency, General Washington.” Wheatley was the first published African American poet and was enslaved. Miraculously, in the midst of war, Washington responded, beginning a rapport. Twenty-year-old Wheatley sent a poem. This founding mother sent art to convince the most influential general in the world that Africans deserved to be included in American liberation. Washington 20/20/20 followed suit. It was intended to poetically reflect upon and connect the legacy of the American Revolution and its hero to a complicated integrated past. There were ten preliminary sketches. These original designs for the work and how to engage the monument in Union Square were focused not on changing the image of Washington but on altering the view of the pedestal on which he was placed. This strategy led to a physical questioning of a key founder. Once questioned, the opportunity was presented to refocus attention by introducing the people of color who surround this figure, further supporting the new tone and framing of the setting. This was done visually and in an interpretable, open-ended, way. There were two components. The first was placing a colorfully painted, see-through barrier between the viewer and the solid white granite base of the sculpture (Figure 18.2), giving viewers the opportunity to question what they were seeing. The pattern cut into the see-through, prow-shaped barrier was based on the frescoes of Tiébélé, Burkina Faso, the royal court of the Kassena people. Every home there is handpainted. The second was engaging the viewers with signage that would further inform the visual questions raised, without answering them, allowing a new self-produced opinion to form. The signage for the artwork was double-sided and the information gathered depended on the viewers’ approach. The viewers could decide whether to read both

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Figure 18.2  Kenseth Armstead, detail view, Washington 20/20/20, Union Square, New York, 2018, perforated steel, angle iron, wood, enamel paint, tar and feathers, 12 ft x 12 ft x 8 ft. Photograph by Liz Ligon.

sides and compare the information on each. Alternatively, there was a pre-existing sign on site by the New York City Parks Department that informs viewers about the original sculpture, the oldest in the New York City Parks collection, modeled by Henry Kirke Brown and dedicated in 1856.

Signage Face #1: Washington 20/20/20 Kenseth Armstead, 2018 Steel Frame, Feathers, Enamel Paint and Tar There were 20,000 African slaves in NY State in 1776. General George Washington, ­Commander in Chief of the Continental Army of the United States of America, was ­stationed in New York City. The Continental Army included African slaves and some African freedmen, but did not actively recruit or solicit their service. Washington hastily departed the strategically important city on December 25, 1776, after a series of d ­ isappointing losses. Twenty percent of the colonial American population was enslaved Africans. See Opposite Sign Face …

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Signage Face #2: Washington 20/20/20 Kenseth Armstead, 2018 Steel Frame, Feathers, Enamel Paint and Tar George Washington’s Army at Yorktown, in 1781, was twenty percent African (mostly freed or loaned slaves). The Continental Army, with overwhelming numbers on land and the assistance of the French Navy blockading escape by sea, forced the surrender of the British, thus ensuring the continued existence of the United States of America. Twenty percent of the post-colonial American population was enslaved Africans. See Opposite Sign Face …

Observing the work after installation, some issues came to light. The original monument had become invisible to everyday users of the very active Union Square southern plaza. The Washington 20/20/20 intervention made some people reassess its presence. Notably, the opportunity to see the monument purposely addressed, though not directly critiqued, prompted further engagement and interaction. While 20/20/20 was on display, there were often protests held at the feet of the monument. My work had become a part of these civic communions, alongside them, directly connecting them to the monument. I noticed most people only read one sign and, at best, viewed one of the two others. Additionally, from my direct observation, many people simply were drawn to the site because the intervention was a jarring focal point. Finally, the open-ended engagement reached an estimated 600,000 people with new ideas, images, and more truthful history.

Interview Inclusion María F. Carrascal (MFC): In the 1980s, there was a conference organized in San Francisco, “The Arts and City Planning.”3 It convened a number of influential cultural agents, artists, architects, and politicians from across the United States—such as Michael Newton, Denise Scott Brown, and Robert Porter—to debate the formal relationship between the artist and the city. It came on the heels of the revolutionary decades of the artistic counterculture, when a more inclusive creative scenario was forged, and was followed by New York’s approval of the Percent for Art program under the mandate of Mayor Edward I. Koch in 1982, and the first report on the contribution of art to the

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city economy.4 Art was understood as one of the driving forces of the city and its welfare and, therefore, instrumental for the design of its public spaces. In the following decades, this debate, however, lost strength as interest in the public realm weakened. Recently, New York City has witnessed a renewed interest in creating public and shared spaces through deep processes of hyper-specialization and hyper-design. But the artist is still mostly excluded. Do you think art could be—or should be—more formally involved in city planning or public space design today? Kenseth Armstead (KA): Artists should be consulted first. Take local artists to any space or site and let them collaborate and brainstorm with architects. If you want to know if a body of water is healthy, ask the surfers first. It’s easier than tracking ear infections at hospitals annually. Artists, like surfers, are constantly testing the water. What we see, hear, feel, and react to and do in a space are what no one else will register. Artists improve neighborhoods. Artists go to neighborhoods because of affordability. We see spaces that nobody uses or sees, and then, for almost nothing, because we don’t have a lot of resources, make something and transform them. What’s problematic is that the developers pick how a site will change after artists engage it. It’s an unhealthy cycle. But if you engage artists and continue to have artists as long-term residents and participants, you actually improve integrated neighborhoods long term. American cities would benefit from considering artists a protected class of citizen. People do not come to cities to watch bankers trade money. Christo and JeanneClaude, when they took over Central Park, it was a global draw. It changed the economy and feeling of Central Park when it was on view.5 A protected classification could provide for a percentage of housing for artists to live and work in, to own or to have rent stabilized for them, instead of them being constantly pushed out by capricious landlords. Real estate development following behind them, that destroys the affordable neighborhoods, would be slowed down. You would have artists continue to contribute to and invest sweat equity in these neighborhoods. This is the big conflict for New York City. There aren’t many affordable neighborhoods for artists to live and work in left in the five boroughs. Artists are looking at Philadelphia, Newark, and upstate. New York City will lose a core value, inhabitant creativity. If only we think of it in a more global way and become forward thinking. There’s a new plan to engage the city called Create NYC, A Cultural Plan for All New Yorkers by the Department of Cultural Affairs that I’m excited about. We’ll see if it can be built upon. Artists see everything as a combination of blank canvas and historical rule base to be broken. We recombine things, make crazy stuff and excitement. That’s what people come to cities to experience. MFC: 20/20/20 discloses an unprecedented way to reconnect art and city, the old monument and the new public space. You intentionally worked in a central space of New York City and of New Yorkers’ urban imaginary, redesigning its narrative, its symbolism. Using the memory of founding father George Washington, one of the first sculptures in New York City, and the historic intersection of Union Square where it is located, you

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articulate several channels of communication. Your work opens to public debate several important topics today: inclusive history, equal representation, contemporary urban heritage, and creative regeneration. How did you come up with this idea? How did you use the multifaceted nature of the site? KA: The equestrian George Washington by Brown is the oldest monument in the New York City Parks collection. It is a core element of a particular kind of visual code. New York City, along with Chicago, is also home to the birth of skyscrapers beginning another form of visual code in modern American architecture. The Empire State Building is visible from the site, which is why my work’s substrate is steel. The Empire State Building is this archetype of how we produce skyscrapers, a specific American handling of urban space, which proliferated for over a century. Washington 20/20/20 is both an interruption of George Washington and his legacy, and an interruption and extension of the steel-girder construction that allowed for the birth of the American-way high rise. Vertical height, speed, and the ability to build quickly on a monumental scale could not have happened in any other construction material. Therefore, when you see this piece from three blocks away, it interrupts the stable Washington story, resets his position. It also interrupts the skyline all the way through to the Empire State Building. There was no way to avoid it, and the work had to function on both of those fronts. If this were history as a visual meal, Washington situated in the Union Square landscape was uncooked white rice. Now, after intervention, it is cooked rice, with spices and complexity, and it is almost overwhelming. This flavor and these notes complicate consumption. They are not sweet or even what is typically thought of as palatable. This is the way history becomes more challenging, personal, and important.

Education MFC: When New York City merchants donated this nineteenth-century monument of George Washington to the City and installed it in Union Square, part of the reason for doing so probably was to send a message of strength, incorruptibility, and patriotism to the citizenship. In a context of nascent colonial revival, this equestrian statue, using an intended classical language, was created to empower a certain political spirit by invoking the imperturbable image of an American founding father.6 Public monuments, as pieces of a giant outdoor library, contributed to the cultivation of a common knowledge of a solid spectrum of references, highlighting historical events and personalities. Does your work contribute to the expansion of this partial history? Does it help to transform the learning experience in the living social corpus of the city—its public space—into a more complete, impartial, and inclusive one? KA: After the American Revolution, there were people who wanted to have an American king. Everybody wanted freedom from England, but the sentiment regarding a postcolonial American monarchy persisted.7 By the 1820s, there were planned parades and

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civic events nationwide to celebrate the new democracy. The only original founder and major general, at that time, who was still alive was the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette toured America in 1824–5, to help stoke the fire in the spirit of democracy. This French aristocrat, who had only survived the French Revolution because he was also a uniformed American soldier and citizen, reminded Americans of the goals of the Revolution. The second most popular town name in America is Lafayette because of this. Most people don’t remember the Marquis de Lafayette now, but new towns for decades of American expansion named themselves after Lafayette or Washington more than any other in the country. Those towns are monuments to the legacy of the founders. The monuments in them and in other spaces extend their ideas into the public square. All the founders are gone. The monuments of the key figures extend the notion that people can come into the public square, without fear, and celebrate their rights to participate in a society and consume directly and be nourished by it. Following the metaphor about food, it’s impossible to be nourished by uncooked white rice. You have to cook it. In order to be sustained by its energy, you need to add some other element, like beans, to create a complete protein. Otherwise, it just becomes sugar. We can’t live indefinitely on sugar. It makes us ill. We’re a young country and body politic. Ironically, we’re also the oldest modern constitutional democracy. We’re constantly remixing and recombining and getting more nutrition from our history. It’s mental soul food. Our social spaces feed this body. The body politic is constantly consuming and growing. I’m engaging that process as an artist. I’m acknowledging that there’s been rice on the menu now for 250 years. There have always been beans in the mix as well, or we wouldn’t have survived. I love cooking. Putting oil in the pan and perfuming it with garlic. After, I take the garlic out and put the next element in, building layer upon layer. Ideas and tastes contrast. That’s how I see history. Cooking creates more calories, fuel to burn. The work provides richer sustenance and flavor. When people talk about the American dream and the “great melting pot,” I feel uncomfortable. The analogy is from smelting. The result is something rigid and inconsumable. If you eat paella, all the flavors are there interacting with one another. They are not reduced to one tasteless element. They’re not burned away. The shrimp, chorizo sausage, and rice and spices are in harmony. That’s what makes it so delicious. It wouldn’t work for me, if I were vegan. A vegan American analogy is the quinoa fruit salad. History isn’t always savory or sweet. It’s boring unless it has all the elements. History is the medium I use to make art. Using all the ingredients and characters is invigorating conceptually. When I was in grammar school in the 1970s, Washington was a major figure in the American Revolution, but the 20 percent of the American Army that was African was not.8 The 30 percent of the British Army that was African was not.9 No one ever mentioned it. Being an African in America, if I had had that story I would have thought: “What the hell were all those Africans doing?”; “How did they do what they did?”; and “How did that come about?” The telling of that story is something that people will do for themselves when they see Washington 20/20/20. A viewer can cook these things into their ongoing experience. Constant processing is essential to how it is

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that our brains and bodies function. Art and a complete history contribute to greater social physical and mental health. MFC: At the same time that you are reviewing, updating, or confronting this monument, you are preserving it. Simultaneously, there is preservation and regeneration. Could you explain the intentions behind this contraposition? How do you build the new upon the old? KA: My piece is temporary, and the equestrian monument George Washington by Brown will stay. My work directs interest towards the legacy of Washington and his relationship as a founder to all the Africans who served with him as patriots. What’s interesting to me is that now, with digital media, the proliferation of this image and ideas starts to build their own monumental scale virtually. People can keep adding to it. Ideas are viral. The parallel of Google to the work I do has to be mentioned.10 In 2005 I began a project called SPOOK™ to collect data that nobody gave me on the history of how Africans participated in the American Revolution. The research focused on and told the story of James Armistead Lafayette. He was a spy, who was an enslaved African and a double agent. His intelligence helped end the Revolution and led to the British General Charles Cornwallis surrendering. Ironically, after all he had done, he had to take the last name Lafayette to maintain his freedom after the war.11 I made a graphic novel and created numerous performance events to engage his story. After ten years of SPOOK™, I started this current project Farther Land, which interprets that information as emotional content. These works are abstract sculpture. The objects are more amorphous and mysterious. They speak to the feeling and the condition of the African in the history of America. The shapes and materials come from the Revolution, but they are repurposed. The legacy of George Washington’s justice system determined the selection of materials used to critique him. Tar and feathering was a ubiquitous, non-lethal punishment for a serious criminal offense. Washington 20/20/20 in particular, when examined closely, follows this Farther Land direction further. We see that the pattern that constitutes the barrier is from an African fresco painting style in Tiébélé in Burkina Faso, at the edge of Ghana. The actual pattern is how they’ve adorned the houses of the chiefs in paint since before the sixteenth century. It’s a visual pun, using this pattern to acknowledge someone, who was in essence to the Africans who served under him, their chief. They didn’t vote for him. They didn’t ask for this, yet they were a crucial part of this colonial turf battle. It’s obviously not a typical American pattern, and you have to do the work to see exactly where it’s from. On the other hand, as a distinctly African symbol, it both celebrates him and critiques him. Those two things together are what form the fuel of the Farther Land project. The symbolism is uniquely African and utterly American. We are allowed to critique power. I’ve made the African pattern an adornment, and I’ve put it on him. The fact that he is resting on the African presence is important. He would not have won the Revolution without it. The history isn’t new. The work I do broadens, engages, and celebrates more of the view.

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Process MFC: This work was articulated through NYC Parks, through its public program, Art in the Parks. This department began connecting art and public space in 1967 under the leadership of Doris C. Freedman. Her advanced work curating public art and intermediating between the artist and the city was carried out under the premise that art could help people to improve their experience of living in the city and promote community “self-determination.” She had the conviction that art was more than a tool for city beautification, artists were instrumental for the betterment of social and urban environments, and she developed complex programs and processes to foster it.12 In your opinion, is this still happening? What was your relationship with the New York City Parks Art in the Parks program? You faced a long process to create 20/20/20, could you reveal us the backstory and the process that you undertook to intervene in one of the most controlled sites of this City? KA: 20/20/20 came about because the deputy director of Public Art in the Art in the Parks program, Jennifer Lantsas, had a studio visit with me in 2016. She suggested I apply for a sponsored, jury-selected, commission. I didn’t win. She later asked me, “so what do you want to do? We want to work with you. If you could just do what you want to do, what would you do as a project?” I answered, “I don’t know yet.” A couple of months later I came back to her saying, “I want to do this … here.” They agreed, but didn’t have a budget to commission it, so this project is self-funded. It’s an extension of my studio work. I’m constantly applying for grants and using that support efficiently. I channeled my general fund and previously used project materials into this work. I’m an independent artist, not working with a gallery, and there was no sponsor. Over the almost three years to completion, Jennifer taught me how to do this. She walked me through how to conform my designs. For example, to satisfy monuments preservation you are not allowed to touch any part of the original sculpture or base. It has to be over a thousand pounds to avoid being carried off. There is a general set of rules concerning the use of the city’s monuments or permanent artworks for the purposes of temporary public art. These were developed because of the notoriety and success of Kristen Visbal’s Fearless Girl (2017) and would be immediately applied later to Ai Weiwei’s Good Fences Make Good Neighbors (2017–18) and Washington 20/20/20: ●● ●● ●● ●●

●●

One is not allowed to touch or fully obscure the monument, artwork, or its base. Installation has to be complete in less than a week. Artists provide their own install staff. The more a monument or artwork is obscured the shorter the time frame of the presentation. Presentation time frames range from a few weeks to a year.

This is not the story of some magical creature, born understanding. It was a process of learning. Now, that said, I had completed other public commissions, including one for “It’s Happening! Celebrating 50 Years of Public Art in New York City Parks,” a festival

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in Central Park that gave me a dry run working with the Parks department. Still, the prospect of communicating with a few different entities before receiving approval was intimidating. The list included the NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks and Monuments Conservation programs, NYC Parks’ Manhattan Borough Office, NYC Community Board Five, and the Union Square Partnership, among others. They were all super supportive! So, yes, I do feel that the legacy of Doris C. Freedman is alive and well in the institutions that engage public space in New York City. The most nerve-wracking thing was presenting to Community Board Five. It’s a public hearing that’s recorded. The public is there, and the council people are there. I’ve seen all of Albert Maysles’ films on Jeanne-Claude and Christo. So, I had seen it go badly, and how it can go well. If anyone is interested in public art, get those films. They’re an amazing roadmap. They helped me make it through, be patient, and discuss my work without ego.

Participation and Engagement MFC: You said there’s a social media support which expands the idea in the piece to the infinite. People take ownership curating the work in their virtual spaces, in their Instagram feed. But you also have developed a physical way to create this interaction, using feathers for example, and, from what I have seen in other pieces of yours, this is a constant in your work. Why is this relevant to your work? How do you create participation and engagement? KA: The first time I used tar and feathers was 2014, in a commissioned public work called Heresy • Hearsay. The work was situated in the landscape at Olana, the Hudson Valley estate of American artist Frederic Edwin Church and America’s first and largest earthwork. It was a visual intervention in the 250-acre manmade natural site that Frederic Church designed for his estate. The work didn’t reference people. The tar and feathers adorned a patriotic symbol, a five-pointed star, in the landscape.13 The next public work I was awarded was installed at Socrates Sculpture Park in 2015–16. Master Work: Astoria Houses, Building 24 (Figure 18.3) mapped the footprint of a single tower of the public housing adjacent to the park.14 In this case, because it was public housing that I was engaging, there needed to be a way to get the people into the work. Astoria Houses is home to more than 3,500 families. Families are more than just one person. I started trying to count out materials to add to the work. In the end, I had thousands of the feathers in the studio from the previous work. It clicked. The final work was composed of stainless-steel tubing, steel, and tar and feathered window forms. Socrates employs local teens to garden and install art. Many live in Astoria Houses. They volunteered time to make the work. They’d ask me, “why would you do this?” I’d ask, “what happens when you make a portrait?” They’d ask, “what do you want us to say about this?” I’d ask, “what would you say about your home?” This Socratic experience, creating in public, with civilians, made a lasting impression on me and continues as a feature in my work.

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Figure 18.3  Kenseth Armstead, Master Work: Astoria Houses, Building 24, 2016, stainless

steel, angle iron, tar and feathers, 20 ft x 40 ft x 40 ft. Commissioned and presented by Socrates Sculpture Park, New York. Photograph by Nate Dorr.

The installation marked the outline of the building’s form at roughly two-fifths scale. It was a bridge to the people. I designed it so that a few of the windows were at viewer height or just above. A couple of higher placed windows were designed to leak feathers. What confused me was, every time I visited, there were never any feathers on the ground or around in the acres of the park. When I inspected the lower windows, I realized people had been collecting them and placing them back in the accessible windows. They made new shapes and designs. It was such an act of tenderness. They had adopted the work, fragility, and all. The duck feathers and tar were a physical contact point, blotting out the view through the windows. It was both uplifting and deeply morose. The feather is, about flight—a flight of fancy—and about mortality—we eat these beautiful creatures. We get them as a byproduct of commercial meat farming. Some see them as delicious. Others find consuming flesh anathema. Feathers add pathos and beauty. They refer to death, torture, and point to transcendence. It made the work active. The meaning doesn’t rest in one place. Another work, commissioned by BRIC’s ArtFP program, made an absurdly inappropriate one-to-one relationship.15 Slaves of New York 1776 (Figure 18.4) includes one feather for each of the 20,000 enslaved Africans. The work invites one

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Figure 18.4  Kenseth Armstead, Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776, 2018, wood, bees wax, encaustic, perforated steel, tar and feathers, 10 ft x 50 ft x 12 ft. Photograph by Etienne Frossard.

to start counting to 20,000. Slaves were 10 percent of the New York’s population at the time. There aren’t that many seats in today’s Barclays Center. It’s overwhelming. Counting stops. Ultimately, other small objects could approach the same end. Artist Do Ho Suh often uses tiny people to support monumental forms. I chose an analogous living thing that’s connected to the eighteenth-century American justice system. Cultures around the globe, for the full 150,000 years or so of modern humanity, have used the feather to celebrate, decorate the body, denote importance, guide weapons, shame the guilty, decry space, and communicate ritually. Whatever culture you are from when you see the feather you bring that history to it. My goal is to engage people to make a leap of faith and embrace the site they are in, creating more there there. The poetic balance between the fragile and durable draws people in. It’s the core of my process. Materials are portals to the unexpected history that I’m coaxing out of the shadows of an overly familiar site.

Notes 1 See The Outdoor Gallery: 40 Years of Public Art in New York City Parks (New York: City of New York Parks and Recreation, 2007), published in conjunction with the exhibition The Outdoor Gallery: 40 Years of Public Art in New York City Parks at The

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3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

Teachable Monuments Arsenal Gallery curated by Jonathan Kuhn, September 13–November 23, 2007; and Michele Bogart, Public Sculpture and the Civic Ideal in New York City, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). José Luis Sert, Fernand Léger, and Sigfried Giedion, “Nine Points on Monumentality” (1943), in A Documentary Anthology, ed. Joan Ockman (New York: Columbia Books of Architecture, Rizzoli, 1993); Sigfried Giedion, “The Need for a New Monumentality,” in New Architecture and City Planning, ed. Paul Zucker (New York: Philosophical Library, 1944), 557–8. The Arts and City Planning (New York: American Council for the Arts, ACA Publications, 1980). “The Arts as an Industry: Their Economic Importance to the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan Region” (New York: Cultural Assistance Center and the Port Authority of New York City, 1983). “Christo’s Gates: Big $ for Big Apple, Artist’s Central Park Project Brought in $254 Million in Economic Activity for the City: Mayor,” CNN Money, March 3, 2005, accessed July 1, 2019, https://money.cnn.com/2005/03/03/news/newsmakers/gates/. Karol Ann Marling, George Washington Slept Here: Colonial Revivals and American Culture, 1876–1886 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Harlow Giles Unger, Lafayette (Hoboken: Wiley, 2003). Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 2006). Julia Furlan, “Google Helps Brooklyn Artist Bring New Founding Father to Life,” WNYC, July 4, 2011, accessed July 1, 2019, https://www.wnyc.org/story/144191brooklyn-artist-brings-life-new-founding-father/. The Marquis de Lafayette recruited and handled James after securing permission from his master. Furthermore, after the war ended on his return to the United States, the Marquis de Lafayette ensured James’ freedom. James had not been freed because he did not bear arms in the war. Ronald Jones, Jeff Kastner, and the Public Art Fund, Ten Years of Public Art, 1972– 1982 (New York: Public Art Fund, 1982). Heresy • Hearsay (2014), Groundswell, September 13, 2014, Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, New York. Master Work: Astoria Houses, Building 24 (2015), Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition, September 27, 2015–March 13, 2016, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, New York. Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776 (2018), BRIC Project Room, Inaugural ArtFP Commission, January 18–February 25, 2018.

Index Abraham Lincoln and His Son Tad (Frech) 157–8 depiction 159 modifications of 170 n.8 unveiling ceremony 158, 168, 170 n.5 activism 3, 5, 14, 52 Adams, Kenneth, Three Peoples 8 Aguayo, Sergio, 1968: Los archivos de la violencia 38 n.8 Ahearn, John 216 Ahsing, Nālamakūikapō 77, 79–80 Ka Hoku o Ka Pakipika (Star of the Pacific) 80 Ai Weiwei, Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 260 American Association for State and Local History 67 American Association of Museums, “A Code of Ethics for Curators” 139 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) 73–4, 76, 80 American Civil War Center 165–6, 176 n.69, 177 n.70 American Civil War Museum 167–8, 177 n.81 American Historical Association (AHA) 8–9, 17 n.29 American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) 120, 122, 126–7, 140 American Protestant Missionary Movement 74 American Revolution 22, 123, 144, 148, 154 n.27, 253, 258–9 Anglo-Saxon supremacy 238–9 anthology 6 Argentina, vandalism in 12 Argote, Ivan, Tourists 33 Arista, Noelani 84 n.14 Armstead, Kenseth “Art: Beyond the City Beautiful” 251

Farther Land 259 Heresy • Hearsay 261 interview by Carrascal 255–61 Master Work: Astoria Houses, Building 24 261, 262 Master Work: Slaves of New York 1776 263 SPOOK™ project 259 Washington 20/20/20 251–5, 258–60 Armstrong, Richard 80 Armstrong, Samuel Chapman 74, 78 “The Hawaiian Problem” 79 Ka Hae Hawaii (Flag of Hawai‘i) 79 Arnautoff, Victor, Life of Washington 8 artistic intervention 12, 29, 37 Art, Race, Space symposium 213–15, 219 Ashe, Arthur (statue of) 164, 175 n.61 Asia-Pacific War 223 Austral Islands 75 Baggini, Julian 126 Bagwell, Vinnie 119–20 Barbee, Matthew 157 Barr, John 166 Baskerville, Viola 165 Battle of Liberty Place 92, 190 Beasley, Bruce, Flux 42 Beauregard, P. G. T. 92, 182, 190 Becker, Joseph 160 Beecher, Henry Ward (statue of) 23 student-driven monument study (fourth graders) 21–3 Belser, James E. 137 Bennett, Lerone Jr., Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream 162, 173 n.44 Bergmann, Meredith, Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument 203 Black Lives Matter movement 1, 3–4, 87, 90, 126

266

Index

Black Monday (stock market crash) 199. See also Charging Bull, Bowling Green Park, New York Bleifeld, Stanley, The Virginia Civil Rights Memorial 174 n.50 Bogart, Michele 7, 122 Booth, John Wilkes 157 Borglum, Gutzon, Lincoln 170 n.10 Boritt, Gabor 159 Borland, Jennifer 40 Bowling, Brag 161, 173 n.34 Briscoe Center for American History, UT Austin campus 13, 63, 65–6, 71 collections for exhibition 72 n.9 From Commemoration to Education: Pompeo Coppini’s Statue of Jefferson Davis exhibition 63–4, 70 exhibit development 66–8 design structure and format 68–70 guidance 67–8 reviewers of 72 n.11 visitor feedback 70 Broadbent, Stephen, Reconciliation 178 n.85 Brown, Henry Kirke 251, 254, 257, 259 Bruchac, Margaret 75–6 Bruzelius, Caroline 40 Buchanan, James 132, 134 Buick, Kirsten Pai 8 Burdick, Usher Lloyd 138 Burke, Tarana 205 n.20 Burmila, Edward 123 Calamai, Baldassarre, The Indian and the Backwoodsman 134 Calhoun, John C. 134 California Indian Rights Association 138 campus portrait 51–9, 60 n.14 campus public art 40–7, 49 n.7 digital mapping projects 40 online map 39–40, 43, 46–7 public art watch 43–4, 46 Canal Street Galleries, New Orleans 181–2, 185, 187 “Canyon of Heroes” 117 Carhart, Tom 153 n.9 Carr, Julian Shakespeare 249 n.21 Casals, Gonzalo 127, 130 n.42 Casteel, Cary 166

Castleman, John Breckenridge 103–7, 114 n.19 Active Service 103 erection of monument 105–6 paternalism 106 against racial segregation 107 service to Louisville 104–5 statue of 101–3, 108, 111, 113 Cavallo, Steven 225 Cavendish, James 54 Cavendish, William 53–4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, United States 2 Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking 230 Charging Bull, Bowling Green Park, New York 195–9, 201–4, 204 n.4, 204 n.8, 207 n.37 Charleston mass shooting 64, 66–7. See also Emanuel AME Church shooting Charlottesville, Virginia 3, 7, 71, 87, 116, 166, 242 events in 4–6, 237, 241 removal of Lee sculpture 3–4 riots 92–3, 115 wake of 7, 9, 13, 115, 163 Charter Management Organizations 187 Chicago World’s Fair 123 Church, Frederic Edwin 261 City Beautiful Movement 123 Civilization Preventing a Savage from Committing a Crime sculpture (Calamai) 134 civil rights 4, 63, 157, 200 Civil War 69, 72 n.10, 79, 87–8, 90, 103–4, 115, 118, 148, 157–9, 161–2, 164–9, 170 n.3, 174 n.47, 176 n.70, 210, 238 monuments 87, 91, 163, 203, 211 Clark, Kathleen 88 121 Coalition of California group 227 Cobb, Thomas R. R., (statue of) 88 Coffin, Charles 159–60, 167, 171 n.22 Coggins, Sonnet Kekilia 13, 74–7, 79–82, 84 n.15 Colleoni, Bartolomeo 120 colonial/colonialism 1, 22, 24, 74–5, 79, 82, 123, 126, 136, 183

Index Columbus, Christopher (sculpture of) 5, 10, 29, 33, 116, 123–4 from Discovery 133, 135 comfort stations military 233 n.3 purpose of 223, 234 n.6 in Shanghai 223 comfort women 223 Comfort Women Memorial, Palisade Park Public Library, New Jersey 225 educational initiatives and campaigns 229–30 memorial first memorial in United States 223–6 impact in San Francisco 230–2 origination (term) 233 n.1 resolution 225 Statue of Peace (see Statue of Peace (Statue of Girl), Seoul, South Korea) survivors 227, 229–30 Teacher’s Resource Series/Teacher’s Resource Guide for 229, 232 Comfort Women Day in Glendale 227 Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) 230 commemoration 9–10, 70, 113, 144, 149, 151, 157, 227 commemorative sculptures/statues 4, 12, 32, 43 and education 13 communist 8, 145, 152 n.2 community/communities 7–8, 10, 13, 15, 41, 51, 55, 57, 67–8, 71, 87, 92, 120, 124, 183, 209, 211–14, 230, 232, 241, 244 community of voices 77, 81, 83 n.1 conversations 87, 96 engagement 11, 41, 96, 219 forums 213, 218 movements 96 participation 51, 186, 218 protests 16 n.12, 29 Conant, Faith R. 34 Confederacy 4, 14, 71 n.1, 87–8, 94, 157, 161, 163, 238, 241 Confederate Army 103–4, 164 Confederate History Month 164, 175 n.57

267

Confederate monuments 4, 13, 17 n.29, 44, 115, 126–7, 164, 174 n.47, 176 n.64, 189, 237–9, 241–4, 247 community conversations 96 damage of (from car accidents) 91, 93–5 impermanence 90–3 public proposals 190–1 removal of (statues) 5, 7, 9, 71, 87, 93, 96, 189–90 Davis, Jefferson 16 n.9, 63–6, 70–1 Foster, Stephen 5 Lee, Robert E. 189 online survey for 72 n.6 preservation of removed 9 white supremacy 88, 90 Confederate soldiers 5, 88, 90, 93, 101, 103–4, 106–7, 113, 160, 174 n.47, 238, 249 n.21 Conwill, Kinshasha Holman 9 Cooley, Charles H. 168 Cooper, James Fenimore, Last of the Mohicans 137 Cooper, Roy 237 Coppini, Pompeo 66, 69, 71 n.1 counter-monuments 29, 109, 178 n.87, 253 counter-protest/counter-protesters 15 n.5, 65, 71, 115, 127 COVID-19 pandemic 2, 4 face masks/coverings 3 Cret, Paul 66 Crumpler, Dewey, Multi-Ethnic Heritage 8 cultural memory 70, 211–12, 214 Dallin, Cyrus 121 Danto, Arthur 6 Davis, Jefferson (statue of) 16 n.9, 63–6, 70–1, 92, 104, 162, 166, 168, 171 n.13 #DavisMustFall 65 Dawdy, Shannon 183 de Blasio, Bill 5, 28, 115, 118, 122, 201–2 Debord, Guy, dérive 46 Decolonize This Place 1, 122 “How to Take Down a Monument” post on Instagram 15 n.1 del Verrochio, Andrea 120

268

Index

Demopolis Confederate Monument, Demopolis, Alabama 95 damage of (from car accident) 93–4 Dewey, John 25 digital humanities project 39, 48 DiLorenzo, Thomas 174 n.46 The Real Lincoln 162 Di Modica, Arturo, Charging Bull 195–204, 204 n.4, 204 n.8 District of Columbia War Memorial (Brooke, Wyeth and Peaslee) 146 di Suvero, Mark 44–5 Doherty, Meghan 58–9 Doilicho, Natty, Waypoint 57–8 Dole, Sanford B. 80–1 Doss, Erika 11 Douglass, Frederick (statue of) 92, 168 Du Bois, W. E. B. “Double Consciousness” 110 “Second Sight” 114 n.31 Dudden, Alexis 236 n.33 #dumpthechump 65 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States 130 n.33 East Harlem Preservation 29, 118 Edwards, Daniel, The Landmark for Peace 220 n.3 Eggleston III, Neverett 163 Emanuel AME Church shooting 4, 15 n.7, 63. See also Charleston mass shooting Engle, Randi 34 E Pluribus Unum public art project (Wilson), Indianapolis 209–11, 220, 221 n.11 cancellation of 211–13 classroom engagement 214–19 IUPUI Museum Studies Program 212–13, 215–16, 219 public engagement 213–14 eugenics 122 Everett, Edward 134, 136 and Greenough 140 n.6, 141 n.15 Facebook 214 Falk, Adam 83 n.3

Farber, Paul 3, 6, 11, 16 n.14 Farnese Bull sculpture 136 Fearless Girl, Bowling Green Park, New York 195–204, 205 n.13, 260 Feinberg, Daniel 58–9 Félix, Javier Vázquez 38 n.8 FeND (Japan–US Feminist Network for Decolonization) 235 n.26 Fenves, Gregory 71 “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawai‘i and Material Histories in the Making exhibition 13 Finkelpearl, Tom 116, 119 First World War 66, 242 Fischer, Greg 101 Flores, Paloma 17 n.23 Floyd, George, murder of 2, 5 protests 1, 96 tribute by Kaphar 18 n.34 Fontana, Antonio 88–9 Forsyth, John 134 and Greenough 140 n.7 Foster, Gaines 90 Fraser, James Earle 120–1, 129 n.20 Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt 140 and McCoy 129 n.22 Frech, David 170 n.10 Abraham Lincoln and His Son Tad 157–8 Freedman, Doris C. 260–1 Free History Lessons program 237, 241–5, 247 French, B. B. 136, 141 n.13 Friedman, Laura 228 Friedman, Martin 18 n.32 Fryd, Vivien Green 135–6 Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815–1860 137 Futter, Ellen 126 GAHT-US Corporation (Global Alliance for Historical Truth) 229 Ganteaume, Cecile 120 Gardega, Alex, Pissing Pug 206 n.31 gender 4, 24, 28, 83 n.8, 198 diversity 199, 202

Index inequality, symbolic representation of 196 Genetin-Pilawa, C. Joseph 137 Gibbon, James 159 Giedion, Sigfried 252 Glendale, California 226–30 Gonzalez, David, “A Reminder, in Bronze, of Experiments on Slaves” 128 n.7 Goodacre, Glenna, Vietnam Women’s Memorial 145 good wars 148, 154 n.27 graffiti 10, 12, 29–30, 37 Grainger, Charles 105 “Grappling with Confederate Monuments and Iconography” webinar 67 Greeley, Robin Adele 31 Green, Byram, A History of Williams College 73 Green, James 121 Greenough, Horatio 140 n.5 and Everett 140 n.6, 141 n.15 and Forsyth 140 n.7 Laocoon 135 Rescue 131–40 Green, Sarah, The Art Assignment 212 Griswold, Charles L. 147 Guelzo, Allen, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America 165 Habermas, Jürgen 110, 114 n.12 Halberstam, Jack 33 Haley, Nikki 15 n.6 Happy Science group 228 Harris, J. Raymond 106 Hart, Frederick, The Three Servicemen 145, 153 n.11, 153 n.13 Hawai‘i 73, 77–81, 84 n.14 Hawkins, Jarrett, Glyphic 44 Heyer, Heather, killing of 15 n.5 Henry, Kendal 119, 128 n.3, 136 Hill, Daniel Harvey 239 Hines, Thomas 103–4 Historians for a Better Future (HBF) 14, 237, 239–42, 245–7 Historic Artifact Management and Patriotism Act, 2015 241 Historic Sites Act, 1935 165

269

“History War” 225–6 Holland, Ron 161 Hollis, Lambert, Lincoln in Richmond 159 Holt, Nancy, Star-Crossed 44 Holzer, Harold 158, 160 HOPE VI program 191 Hopkins, Mark 73 House Resolution 121 224, 227 Hunter, Gertrude Teixeira 61 n.18 Hunt, Richard, Hybrid Construction 44 Hussein, Saddam (statue of) 160, 172 n.28 Hwang, Kum-ju 224, 234 n.7 Ifill, Sherrilyn, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century 93 Indianapolis 212–13 Arts Council of Indianapolis 217 E Pluribus Unum (see E Pluribus Unum public art project (Wilson), Indianapolis) Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee 217 Indianapolis Cultural Trail 210, 215, 217, 219, 220 n.2 Talking Wall (Williams) 211, 215–19 Indian Reorganization Act, 1934 138 Inquiry Design Model (IDM) 230 Instagram 15 n.1, 18 n.36, 201 interventions 5, 10–12, 14, 29–31, 33–7, 57, 92, 109, 209, 212–13, 220, 221 n.22, 251, 255, 261 Irving, Washington, A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus 123 Jackson, Stonewall (statue of) 88, 162 damage of 91 Jacobs, Hannah L. 40 Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley exhibition 18 n.38 Japan 223–6, 228–30, 232–3. See also comfort women Jim Crow laws 4, 107, 113, 115, 126, 185, 188 John Breckinridge Castleman statue 8 Johnson, Andrew 104 Johnston, Healoha 78 Jordan, Ayana 60 n.10

270

Index

Kalākaua, David 79 Kamehameha I 79 Kaphar, Titus Impressions of Liberty 10 tribute to George Floyd 18 n.34 Karnow, Stanley 152 n.4 Keck, Charles, Lincoln and Boy 171 n.10 Keller, Robert, Freedom Summer Memorial 44 Kennedy, John F. 123 Kentucky Center for African American Heritage 111 Kim, Eun-sung 227 Kim, Hak-soon 231, 234 n.7 Kim, Park Jason 225 Kim, Patricia 3 Kim, Seo-kyung 227 Kline, Robert 160, 162, 171 n.13, 172 n.27, 174 n.48 Knight, Cher Krause 116 Kolers, Avery 8, 109 Korea 226–7, 229 butterfly symbolism in 235 n.25 Korean American Civic Empowerment 225 Korean American Forum of California (KAFC) 227, 229–30 Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery 226 Statue of Peace (see Statue of Peace (Statue of Girl), Seoul, South Korea) Korean War Veterans Memorial 151 Koyama, Emi 226, 234 n.17 Kritios Boy sculpture 121 Kubrick, Stanley, 2001: A Space Odyssey 36 Kuhn, Jonathan 128 n.8 Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 90, 237 Kuznar, Lawrence 91 Labra, Ximena 36, 38 n.18 Tlatelolco 1968/2008 35–6 Tlatelolco: Public Space Odyssey 38 n.17 Ladies’ Memorial Associations 88, 238 Lafayette, James Armistead 259 Lafayette, Marquis de 258, 264 n.11 Land, Ray 50 n.11 Landrieu, Mitch 5, 92

Lantsas, Jennifer 260 Lee, Robert E. (statue of) 1, 4, 92, 115, 162, 175 n.56, 189 Robert E. Lee Monument 2, 30–1, 34, 88 Legacy of Service exhibition 147–8 Léger, Fernand 252 Leigh, Simone 119–20 León de la Barra, Pablo 29 Lerer, Marisa 12 Life of Washington mural (Arnautoff) 8 Lincoln, Abraham “Bind Up the Nation’s Wounds” 159, 161, 169 Emancipation Proclamation 167–8 Lincoln Memorial 152 n.1 statue of 14, 33, 145, 157–69 African American responses to 162–4 opponents to 175 n.56 visit to Richmond 159–60 Lindy Boggs Center for Community Literacy 184 Lin, Maya, Vietnam Veterans Memorial 143–6, 151, 153 n.10 Lipkis, Henry 184 Littlefield, George Washington 70 memorial, UT Austin campus 64–6, 71 n.1 Liu, Betty 202, 207 n.33 Lonetree, Amy 79 Lost Cause mythology of Civil War 4–5, 14, 69, 90, 92, 161, 238 Louisville, Kentucky 5, 101 Castleman’s service to 104–5 Castleman statue in (removal of) 8, 102, 110 democratic public sphere and inequality 108–11 park system 107 Public Art and Monuments Committee 111 members of 113 n.2 recommendations for problematic monuments 111–13 Lubar, Steven 211 Lum, Ken 6, 11 Lunde, Darrin 121

Index MacLeod, Cynthia 158, 170 n.9, 171 n.13, 171 n.16, 173 n.38 MacNeil, Hermon Atkins 121 Madison Square Art symposium, Removing Public Art 9, 18 n.32 Mandalapu, Rohit 71 n.5 Manifest Destiny 135, 139 Manship, Paul Pioneers of the West 139 Settlers of the East Coast 138 Marcus, David 127 Mark-Viverito, Melissa 128 n.7 Markwalter, T. 88–9 mass shooting Charleston mass shooting 64, 66–7 Emanuel AME Church shooting 4, 15 n.7, 63 Maxwell, Ron, Copperhead 173 n.41 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers 5, 13, 29 McConnell, Mitch 200 McCray, Chirlane 118, 128 n.6 McPherson, James 159 McQuinn, Delores L. 163 Medina, Cuauhtémoc 32 mele (songs/chants/poems) 79–80 Memorial del 68 museum 37 memorial(s)/memorialization 4, 7, 26, 29–31, 37, 37 n.1, 41–4 Argentinian 12 purposes of 6 in Tlatelolco Square 33 Vietnam War 143 memory 32, 56 Civil War 163, 165, 169 cultural 70, 211–12, 214 historical 56 public 69–70, 190–1, 212, 238–9, 241 social 32 Vietnam War 147 Mencken, H. L. 162 Prejudices: Third Series 173 n.45 Mera, Koichi 229, 234 n.17 Mercié, Antonin 30, 88 #MeToo movement 200, 205 nn.20–1, 232 Metropolitan Museum of Art 46, 121 Meyer, Jan H. F. 50 n.11

271

Miami University Art Museum (MUAM) Sculpture Park 41, 43–4 Middlebury College Museum of Art 139 Milano, Alyssa 205 n.20 military sexual slaves. See comfort women Miller, Paul 172 n.30 Mills, Clark 136 Minaya, Joiri 18 n.36 The Cloaking 10–11 Mirkinson, Judith 232 Mirzoeff, Nicholas 7 Mitchell, Lucy Sprague 26 Moehonua, William Luther 79–80 Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia 1, 6, 10–11, 16 n.9, 162–4, 167 Monument Lab, Philadelphia 6, 11, 96, 183, 186, 189 Monumentos, antimonumentos y nueva escultura pública (Monuments, Antimonuments, and New Public Sculpture) exhibition 29 monuments 4, 6, 9, 12, 14. See also specific monuments criteria for existing 112 destruction of 1, 97 guidelines and principles 111 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers 116–17, 124–5 Public Art and Monuments Committee 111–12 influence for conflicts 4 National Guard to protect 127 problematic 12–13, 24, 27–9, 97, 103, 111–13 purposes of 6 Monument to North Carolina Women of the Confederacy, North Carolina 239, 242, 246, 249 n.15 Monument to the Revolution 36 Moran, Martin 160, 172 n.25 Morgan, John H., “Lexington Rifles” 103–4 Moylan, Richard 119 Mullins, Paul 219 Muñoz, José Esteban 33 mural(s) 164 Flux (Beasley) 42

272

Index

Life of Washington (Arnautoff) 8 Multi-Ethnic Heritage (Crumpler) 8 Three Peoples (Adams) 8 museum naturalists 121–2 Mutu, Wangechi 119 My Lai Massacre 149 Nabi (Butterfly) Fund 235 n.25 Nadeshiko Action (Japanese Women for Justice and Peace) group 228 Nam, David, Waypoint 57–8 National Guard to protect monuments 127 nationalists, white 4, 115 National Mall 149–50, 152 n.1 District of Columbia War Memorial 146 Korean War Veterans Memorial 151 Lincoln Memorial 152 n.1 US Holocaust Memorial Museum 147 VVM (see Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM/the Wall)) National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC 22 National Park Service (NPS) 143, 145, 147, 157–8, 160–1, 164–5, 167, 176 n.68 “Meet Mr. Lincoln” 177 n.81 visitors’s survey 178 n.83 Nazis 117, 189 Neatline 40, 43 “The Need for a New Monumentality” (Giedion) 252 negative space of sculpture 188, 216, 219 Neo-Confederate heritage groups 14, 87, 157–8, 162, 164, 166, 177 n.71 neo-Nazis 4 New Orleans 5, 87, 123 Board of Trade 184 Canal Street Galleries 181–2, 185, 187 Crossroads events 187 culture 190–1 economy of 183–4 New Orleans African American Museum 188 1892 New Orleans General Strike 184 Paper Monuments (see Paper Monuments, New Orleans) public engagement 185–7

public library system 186 Tivoli Circle 189, 192 n.10 tourism 183–4 transit system 186 Newsome, Bree 4, 15 n.6, 241 New York City 5, 27, 40, 101, 256–7, 261 Charging Bull sculpture 195–9, 201–4, 204 n.4, 204 n.8, 207 n.37 Empire State Building 257 Fearless Girl sculpture 195–204, 205 n.13, 260 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers 12–13, 29, 115–17, 123–5 members of 127 n.1 Municipal Art Society (MAS) Summit 251 New York Academy of Medicine 118–19 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) 196, 198–9, 202–3 Parks Department 254 Socrates Sculpture Park 261, 262 Washington 20/20/20 monument (Armstead) 15, 251–5, 258–60 “Nine Points on Monumentality” (Giedion, Léger and Sert) 252 Niobid Group sculpture 135 Nishi, Tatzu, Discovering Columbus 33 Nixon, Richard M., 138, 149 “No Human Monuments” policy, San Luis Obispo 204 non-profit organizations 144, 173 n.33, 217, 220 n.2, 224 North Carolina 101, 237 confederate monuments and public memory in 238–9, 241 Democratic Party 238 Durham 5, 87, 101, 241, 247 Free History Lessons program 237, 241–5, 247 Populist Party 248 n.9 North Carolina Colored Industrial Fair, 1879 238 The Northwest Conspiracy 104 Olivier, Karyn, The Battle Is Joined 11 Omeka web-publishing platform 40, 43, 48

Index Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Palace), Mexico 36 Palisades memorial 225 Palmer-Angell, Brendon, Together 188 Paper Monuments, New Orleans 14, 96, 181–5, 187, 189, 191. See also public art public engagement 185–7 public proposal 190–1, 192 n.11, 193 n.12 Re:Present installations 188 Paris Climate Accord, 2017 202 Parks and Monuments Conservation programs 261 Pastorius, Francis Daniel (statue of) 11 Patterson, Sunni 188 Peace sculptural group 210 A People’s Contest: Struggles for Nation and Freedom in Civil War America exhibition 168 Percent for Art program 43, 119 Perry, Greg, The Landmark for Peace 220 n.3 Perry, Hinton, John Breckinridge Castleman Statue 102, 105, 112 Persico, Luigi Discovery of America 131–40 Genius of America 134 War and Peace 134 Pétain, Philippe 116–18 Piccolo, Arthur 199 Plessy, Homer 184 police force 1, 4, 31, 34 Black Lives Matter protest of 3, 90 Poniatowska, Elena 31 La Noche de Tlatelolco/Massacre in Mexico 30 Pope, James Russell 120–1, 140 popular culture 238 Porter, David Dixon, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War 171 n.21 portraits. See campus portrait Preston, William C. 134 Prezi software 215 psychogeography (Situationist International) 46 public art 3, 6–7, 39, 87, 96, 115–16, 120, 131, 182, 198, 200, 203, 209, 215–16. See also Paper Monuments, New Orleans

273

on campus (see campus public art) Mexican 37 n.1 Public Law 108–126 legislation, VVMEC 152 n.5 public memory 69–70 in North Carolina 238–9, 241 public proposals as 190–1 Queen Lili‘uokalani 79 Queen Victoria 128 n.9 race/racism 1, 3–4, 13, 23–4, 29, 57, 71 n.4, 92, 95, 106–8, 115, 122, 209, 213, 215, 219 Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) 147 Rayburn, Sam 138 Reconstruction-era 88, 90, 98 n.7, 113, 161, 164, 167, 183, 238 Remington, Frederick, Bronco Buster sculpture 41 Richmond County Confederate Monument, Augusta, Georgia 88–9 Richmond, Virginia 2, 5–6, 14, 31, 164–5 Lincoln’s visit to 159–60 Richmond Historic Riverfront Foundation 164 Richmond National Battlefield Park 160, 167, 176 nn.69–70, 177 n.81, 178 n.82 Richmond Renaissance 176 n.64 Robert E. Lee Monument 2, 30–1, 34, 88 tourism 176 n.64 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 11, 178 n.87 Riegl, Alois 108 Ride New Orleans organization 185–6 Rizzo, Frank 5 Robertson, Brianne 8 Robertson, William, History of America 123 Rodin, Auguste 35 The Burghers of Calais 34 Rooney, Sierra 233 Roosevelt, Theodore (statue of) 5, 116, 120–3, 126–7, 140 Rosowsky, Lisa, Ghost Portraits 57 Rotnofsky, Xavier 71 n.5

274

Index

“Roundup” 71 n.4 Russo, Gaetano 29, 123 Rust, Marie 172 n.29 Ruth, David 160, 174 n.47 Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, General Sherman monument 120 Salerno, Judith A. 119, 129 n.15 Sandweiss, Martha 9 San Francisco Board of Education 8, 232 Saunders, Richard 134, 136 Savage, Kirk 147, 149, 212 Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War and Monument in 19thCentury America 31 Save Outdoor Sculpture! database 91 Schmidt, Maggie, “Monument Circle Project” 213 Schmitz, Bruno, Soldiers and Sailors Monument 5, 210, 212–13, 220 n.4 Schwartz, Barry 166, 177 n.79 Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth-Century America 177 n.73 Scruggs, Jan C. 143–6, 149–50, 152 n.3, 153 n.13, 154 n.18 Second Great Awakening 73 Second World War 11, 117, 122, 148, 154 n.27, 230, 232 wartime sex slaves 223–4 segregation, racial 107–8, 115 Senie, Harriet F., Critical Issues in Public Art 198 Serra, José Ramón Ruisánchez 38 n.13 Serra, Richard, Tilted Arc 216 Serra, St. Junipero 5 Sert, José Luis 252 Service Corporation International (SCI) 153 n.13 Serwer, Adam 125 Sessions, Jeff 200 Shapiro, Gary 6 shared authority 244 Sharing Space with Authority: Proposals for Installing the College Presidential Portraits exhibition 59 Shrady, Henry Merwin 115

Sic Semper Tyrannis (Thus Always to Tyrants) 157 Siddons, Louise 40 Sienkewicz, Julie A. 137, 141 n.10 Silent Sam Confederate monument 249 n.21 Silent Sentinels 242–3, 245 Sims, Marion J. (statue of) 5, 16 nn.11–12, 29, 116, 118–20, 125, 128 n.4 “Beyond Sims” competition 5 Sing, Lillian 230–1 Sino-Japanese War 223 site-specific/site-specificity 44, 206 n.27 Smart, Leta Myers 138 Smith, Edward C. 174 n.48 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 83 n.6 Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC 74, 78, 91, 99 n.13, 139 social justice 52, 63, 87, 117 social media 1, 33, 96, 202, 205 n.20, 213, 241, 245, 247, 261 solidarity 1, 3, 8, 184–5, 202, 226, 230 Kolers’ definition of 109 South Africa 8, 93 southern heritage 6, 162, 164, 241 State Street Global Advisors 196, 199–200, 202, 206 n.27 Statue of Peace (Statue of Girl), Seoul, South Korea 226–30, 233, 235 n.24 controversies 228–9 replicas of 227 Stein, Lydia, Remediation 188 Stela of Tlatelolco monument 31–4, 36 Stewart, George 138 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 168 strategic alienation 75, 77 Stuart, James Ewell Brown “J. E. B.” (statue of) 10–11, 162 student campaign 71 n.5 Student Movement in Mexico City (1968) 30 Sturken, Marita 147 Sutton, Benjamin 128 n.7 symbolism 1, 67, 123, 127, 166, 196, 235 n.24, 259 butterfly 235 n.25 symbolic interventions 10, 29

Index Tang, Julie 230–1 Taraporevala, Cyrus 202 Taylor, Marshall “Major” 218 Team-Based Learning 30–7, 37 n.6 terrorism 4, 12, 103 Thompson, Hugh, Jr. 149 Three Peoples murals (Adams) 8 threshold concept theory 50 n.11 #TimesUp movement 200, 205 n.20 Tlatelolco Square, memorial in 31–3, 36 Tolles, Thayer 121 Town, Edward 59 n.3 Tredegar Iron Works, Richmond, Virginia 157–9, 165, 167–9, 169 n.1, 176 n.64, 178 n.87 Trump, Donald 3–4, 6, 200, 202–3, 237 Truth, Sojourner 168 Tyler-McGraw, Marie 173 n.37 Uffizi, Italy 134–6 United States Capitol 131–2 United States Capitol Preservation Commission 139 United States Capitol Visitor Center 140 United States Historical Society 157, 160, 173 n.33 Unite the Right rally 4 University of Texas at Austin 63–4, 68 Littlefield memorial 64–5 Upton, Dell 9 US Department of Veterans Affairs 154 n.20 US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC 147 Van Buren, Martin 134 vandalism 5, 9, 11–12, 29–30, 37, 111 in Argentina 12 of Central Park Columbus statue 33 Vanderlyn, John, Death of Jane McCrea 136 VanGunder and Young firm 88–9 Vascellero, Sal 26 Vietnam Veterans Memorial (VVM/the Wall) 143–7, 149–51, 152 n.1, 153 n.13, 201 design competition 152 n.8

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Vietnam Veterans Memorial Education Center (VVMEC) 143–4, 147–51 Public Law 108–126 legislation 152 n.5 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF/the Fund) 143–8, 150–1, 154 n.16, 155 n.31, 155 n.35, 155 n.40 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Mobile Tour App 150, 155–6 n.41 Missing in Action 150 Scan a Name 150 Wall Facts 151 Wall of Faces 146, 149–50 Vietnam Veterans Memorial Visitor Center Extension Act 155 n.39 Vietnam War 143–51 Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Washington, DC 145 Vilcek, Marcia F. 121 virtual preservation 14, 131 Visbal, Kristen Fearless Girl 195–204, 260 Girl Chasing Butterflies 205 n.12 von Miller II, Ferdinand Freiherr 118 von Rydingsvaard, Ursula 44 Heart in Hand sculpture 45 Waddell, Alfred M. 239 Wagner, Danielle, Luxembourg x Luxembourg 44 Walker, Darren 116, 129 n.14 Walker, William H. T., (statue of) 88 Walter, Thomas Ustick 138 Ward, John Quincy Adams 22–3 war memorials 143. See also specific war memorials Warren, Elizabeth 200 Warren, Thomas J., The Emancipation Proclamation and Freedom Monument 168 wartime sex slaves 223–6 Washington, DC 22, 131, 146, 149, 201 Washington Art Union Association 137 Washington Coalition for Comfort Women (WCCW) 224 Washington, George 253, 257 statue of 134, 137, 144, 251, 259

276 Washington, Harriet A., Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present 118 Washington 20/20/20 (Armstead), New York 15, 251–5, 258–60 Waters, Leon 184–5 web-based exhibition 211 Webster, Sally, Critical Issues in Public Art 198 Wednesday Demonstration 226, 235 n.20 Wheatley, Phillis, “To His Excellency, General Washington” 253 White, George M. 139 white nationalists 4, 115 White, Ronald C. 158 white supremacy 1, 7, 52, 88, 90, 189, 237, 241–2, 245, 247 Whyte, Steven, Women’s Column of Strength, San Francisco 230–1 Wiley, Kehinde 11, 119 Jacques-Louis David Meets Kehinde Wiley exhibition 18 n.38 Rumors of War 10, 178 n.87 William III, King 161 Williams, Bernard, Talking Wall 211, 215–19 Williams College, Massachusetts 73 and ABCFM 74 “The Field Is the World”: Williams, Hawai‘i and Material Histories in the Making exhibition 74, 76, 78, 81–2 Haystack Monument 73–5, 81–2 Haystack Prayer Meeting 73, 80–1 Missionary Movement 73 Williams College Lyceum of Natural History 74–5 archives 77–8 collection histories 75–7

Index Hawai‘i archive gallery 78–81 learnings 81–2 Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) 13, 74–5, 82 Williams, Michael P. 163 Williams, Paul 150 Wilson, Fred 214 Cultural Trail 210, 213, 216–17, 219 E Pluribus Unum (see E Pluribus Unum public art project (Wilson), Indianapolis) Mining the Museum exhibition 212–13 Wilson, Woodrow (statue of) 64 Winberry, John 90 Wise, H. Alexander 165 Wodiczko, Krysztof, Abraham Lincoln: War Veteran Projection 33 Women of the Confederacy Monument 245 Woodfin, Randall 5 World’s Columbian Exposition 123 Wright, Ben 67 Wright, Natalia 141 n.11 Yale, Elihu 53–4 Yale University (campus portrait) 52 female faculty 60 n.7 Psychiatry Department 52–3, 56, 59 Art Committee 53, 56–7 Yale Center for British Art 53–4, 60 n.13 Yale New Haven Health System 52 Yale School of Medicine (YSM) 52, 59 Committee for Art in Public Spaces 56 Yoshimura, Hirofumi 232 YouTube 212, 214 Zima, Paula, Teddy Roosevelt Monument 204

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