Future Memory
47 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 months ago - ★★★★★ - 21 ratingsWelcome to Monument Lab's Future Memory, a public art and history podcast. Each episode, hosts Paul Farber and Li Sumpter explore stories and critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments. We speak to the artists, activists, and historians on the frontlines, building the next generation of public spaces through stories of social justice and equity. Here are the monumental people, places, and ideas of our time.
Plot of Land is a podcast mini-series by Monument Lab that explores how land ownership and housing in the United States have been shaped by power, public memory, and privatization.
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Episodes
Stewarding Sound and Ancestral Memory with Nathan Young
June 22, 2023 02:00 - 42 minutes - 39.1 MBPaul Farber: You are listening to Monument Lab Future Memory where we discuss the future of monuments and the state of public memory in the US and across the globe. You can support the work of Monument Lab by visiting monumentlab.com, following us on social @Monument_Lab, or subscribing to this podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. Li Sumpter: Our guest today on Future Memory is artist, scholar, and composer, Nathan Young. Young is a member of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and a dir...
MING MEDIA is the Message with Jon Kaufman and El Sawyer
June 15, 2023 02:00 - 50 minutes - 46 MBLi: Welcome Jon Kaufman and El Sawyer to Future Memory. Jon: Thank you for having us. El: Thank you, cool name. Li: So what's your origin story? How did Jon and El become Ming Media? Jon: It's an interesting story and there's not really one particular magical spark, but it definitely was an organic process from my perspective, right? El his own journey and perspective with it, but I never really considered filmmaking as a career at all when I was younger, I never wanted to ...
Teaching Truth with Jesse Hagopian
June 08, 2023 13:00 - 48 minutes - 44.8 MBLi Sumpter: So welcome back to another episode of Future Memory. My guest today is Jesse Hagopian. He is a Seattle-based educator and the author of the upcoming Teach Truth: The Attack on Critical Race Theory and the Struggle for Antiracist Education. Hagopian is an organizer with the Zinn Education Project and co-editor of the books Black Lives Matter at School: An Uprising for Educational Justice and Teaching for Black Lives. Welcome, Jesse. Jesse Hagopian: Oh, thanks so much for havi...
Plot of Land - Ep. 10: We Have to be Creative as Hell
May 04, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 64.4 MBConcluding the Plot of Land series, we look at the work being done across the United States to repair our relationship with the land, from the Tongva conservancy in Los Angeles to the Sea Islands of South Carolina. What will it take to imagine a radically different future? With the stakes rising along with the temperature, what is the scale of change we need to shift power and build a more just world? Reporters: Jameela Hammond @JameelaHammond, Katherine Nagasawa @Kat_Nagasawa, Anya Groner ...
Plot of Land - Ep. 9: Rotten Eggs & Gasoline
April 27, 2023 10:05 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBWe return to Louisiana and the Joneses, where in recent decades family members have moved away for work and to escape the increasingly toxic air and water leaking from the neighboring chemical plants of Cancer Alley. As stronger hurricanes and vanishing wetlands reconfigure Louisiana’s topography, new industries continue old patterns of environmental harm. What will this mean for the future of Jonesland? What can their story on the front-lines of climate change teach us as the nation faces t...
Plot of Land - Ep. 8: 66 Acres Down by the River
April 27, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 62.2 MBWe learn the incredible story of Sedonia Dennis, a woman once enslaved in Louisiana, who came to own a piece of the plantation that had once claimed ownership of her family. And we explore how, over time, the plantation economy gave way to the petrochemical industry. Join us as we spend time with Sedonia Dennis’s descendant, Jazzy Miller who is documenting her family’s fight to exist at the intersection of each of these forms of extraction. Reporters: Jameela Hammond @JameelaHammond, Anya G...
Plot of Land - Ep. 7: The Sad Part Is That It Was Successful
April 20, 2023 10:05 - 1 hour - 74.5 MBWe’re looking at what happened after subsidized affordable housing programs expired in the 2000s on New York’s Roosevelt Island. Some residents managed to buy in, build equity and stability. Others experienced precarious tenancy or displacement while an ongoing influx of wealthier residents is changing the face of the island. We ask the question, can Roosevelt Island’s past guide state and federal investments in multi-racial, multi-income neighborhoods for the future? Reporters: Jameela Ha...
Plot of Land - Ep. 6: Tucked Between Those Two Boroughs
April 20, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 60.4 MBNew York’s Roosevelt Island was imagined as an idyllic, multi-racial, multi-income community, developed as part of the social housing movement in the 60s and 70s. But by the 1980s, socially-minded investments in housing were overtaken by neoliberal policy. We talk to current-day and displaced residents to see how this change affected them, while looking back from the point of divergence to find the decisions that created and dismantled housing as a human right. Reporters: Jameela Hammond @...
Plot of Land - Ep. 5: We’re Out Here at our Homeland
April 13, 2023 10:05 - 1 hour - 73.6 MBReporters: Jameela Hammond @JameelaHammond, Katherine Nagasawa @Kat_Nagasawa, Anya Groner @anyagroner Interviewees: Residents Nate Bradford, Sr. Nate Bradford, Jr.; Instagram: @gline_ranch Theola Cudjoe Jones Fannie Washington Patricia Harris Amanda Bradford Henrietta Hicks Damien McCormick Dr. Willard Tillman Kendra Field Ph.D.; Twitter: @TuftsRCD Melissa Stuckey Ph.D.; Twitter: @melissanstuckey Russell Cobb Ph.D.; Twitter: @RussellSCobb
Plot of Land - Ep. 4: This Arc of Very Fertile Land
April 13, 2023 10:00 - 53 minutes - 49.4 MBReporters: Jameela Hammond @JameelaHammond, Katherine Nagasawa @Kat_Nagasawa, Anya Groner @anyagroner Interviewees: Residents Nate Bradford, Sr. Nate Bradford, Jr. ; Instagram: @gline_ranch Theola Cudjoe Jones Fannie Washington Lucy Ellis Patricia Harris Henrietta Hicks Dr. Francis Marzett Shelton, Ed.D. (Mayor) Damien McCormick Claudio Saunt, Ph.D.Twitter: @ClaudioSaunt Kendra Field, Ph.D.; Affiliate Twitter: @TuftsRCD Melissa Stuckey, Ph.D.Twitter: @melissanstuckey Russell ...
Plot of Land - Ep. 3: Just Oil Wells on These City Streets
April 06, 2023 10:05 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBWhat happens when the place we call home, the communities we form around it, and our sense of safety, is at the mercy of forces far outside of our control? We visit Long Beach, in Los Angeles, where oil and gas pipelines have jeopardized people’s homes and security. Reporters: Jameela Hammond @JameelaHammond, Mark Nieto @COMBATmusic Interviewees: Lisa Nieto Jacqueline Casillas Robert Davis Sarah Elkind Ph.D Ashley Hernandez; Affiliate Twitter: @CBECal, @STAND_LA
Plot of Land - Ep. 2: They’re Trying to Lure Homeowners to Sell
April 06, 2023 10:00 - 40 minutes - 37 MBHave you ever seen billboards on the highway offering cash for houses? Has a stranger called you offering money for your home sight unseen? In Plot of Land’s second episode, we wade into the world of housing speculation, considering how private equity markets and real estate investment trusts have transformed the places we literally call home. How did housing become such a profitable market? And so volatile that it could lead to the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Repor...
Plot of Land - Ep. 1: Location, Location, Location
March 30, 2023 13:00 - 46 minutes - 42.2 MBPlot of Land dives into the history of land ownership through the emerging future: real estate in the Metaverse. In creating virtual land, we could make literally anything true, from universal public space to zero gravity, so why have people chosen to replicate real-world patterns of land use when we know they are highly inequitable, exploitative, and unjust? In this first episode, we meet the Plot of Land team of producers and go deep into the ways land, housing, and memory intertwine. Re...
Plot of Land - Trailer
March 27, 2023 04:00 - 2 minutes - 1.96 MBPlot of Land is a podcast mini-series by Monument Lab that explores how land ownership and housing in the United States have been shaped by power, public memory, and privatization. Over the last year, we have assembled a team of storytellers and reporters to explore the invisible forces that shape both the land and story of this country. The podcast breaks down how race, class, land, and power have been used to create unfair systems that harm nearly everyone today. We believe that to build th...
Future Memory Takes Flight with Tatyana Fazlalizadeh
March 02, 2023 21:36 - 37 minutes - 34.6 MBThis episode, co-host Li Sumpter, caught up with multidisciplinary artist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh at the onset of her mural project, Flight. Tatyana sees flying as a metaphor for liberation, escape, and transformation. She informs and illuminates this vision through the experiences, hopes, and dreams of everyday people who dare to look up. Li and Tatyana dig into the layered meaning of flying and share some of the literary and pop culture inspirations for Flight. From Toni Morrison to Kendrick...
Reading the Rocky Statue with Paul Farber
February 17, 2023 14:08 - 40 minutes - 36.9 MBIn this episode, co-host Li Sumpter turns the mic to Future Memory co-host and Monument Lab Director, Paul Farber, to go behind-the-scenes on the production of his new podcast project The Statue from WHYY digital studios and the NPR podcast network. The series investigates one of Philly’s most monumental destinations visited by millions from around the world each year --- the Rocky Statue. Li and Paul discuss some of the local and global stories that make the history of the statue as epic as...
A Crack in the Hourglass: An Ongoing COVID-19 Memorial with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Sekou Cooke (Live at the Brooklyn Museum)
August 12, 2022 14:25 - 37 minutes - 34.4 MBFor this episode, we take a trip to the Brooklyn Museum with Future Memory co-host Paul Farber where he moderated a program for the popular discussion series Brooklyn Talks. How can we memorialize and visualize the extraordinary loss of life caused by COVID-19? Farber explores this question in a dynamic exchange between Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Sekou Cooke – two powerful practitioners working in separate but intersecting fields. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a media artist working at the crossroad...
Building a Monument for Dr. Maya Angelou with Lava Thomas
August 04, 2022 13:30 - 18 minutes - 16.8 MBThis episode, co-host Paul Farber speaks to multidisciplinary artist Lava Thomas. They catch up about a major project a long time in the making – a monument honoring Dr. Maya Angelou – prolific poet, Civil Rights activist, and American memoirist. The monument is slated for installation outside of San Francisco’s main public library in the near future. Lava’s monumental journey begins with bike tours with her family in Washington D.C. and makes a sharp turn in when she learned monuments had t...
Leaving a Future Record Behind with Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta B. Mayson of ConsenSIS
July 28, 2022 13:00 - 50 minutes - 46.6 MBWe kickoff a new season of the Monument Lab podcast Future Memory with Yolanda Wisher and Trapeta B. Mayson, two renowned former poet laureates of Philadelphia. Wisher and Mayson are the creators of ConsenSIS, a project that summons “sisterly history” to preserve the past and present literary legacy of Black women and femme poets in Philadelphia. ConsenSIS is a part of Monument Lab’s nationwide Re:Generation project, supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project. Co-host Li Sumpte...
Monumental “Local Diaspora” in St. Louis with MADAD’s Damon Davis, Mallory Rukhsana Nezam, and De Nichols
July 21, 2020 16:00 - 54 minutes - 50 MBWelcome back to the Monument Lab podcast. This episode, we focus on St. Louis. For the past two years, Monument Lab has worked closely with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, mapping monuments in St. Louis. That includes traditional landmarks and unofficial sites of memory, whether they are existing, potential, or erased. To mark the close of our project together, we wanted to speak with locally-rooted MADAD, a brilliant and thoughtful collective of artists and designers from St. Louis whose work...
Museums are Not Neutral with Movement Co-Founders La Tanya S. Autry and Mike Murawski
May 14, 2020 18:00 - 1 hour - 55.3 MBThe phrase “Museums Are Not Neutral” is both a hashtag and the rallying words of a movement. This mantra has already changed the way museums around the world are visited, curated, and protested. Amplified by our guests Art Worker La Tanya S. Autry and Museum Educator Mike Murawski, the hashtag #MuseumsAreNotNeutral has been engaged more than a million times online by museum curators and educators, and by colleagues in related fields like libraries and archives. As Autry, who is employed at...
Commemorating the 1918 Flu Pandemic with Mütter Museum Organizer Nancy Hill
May 07, 2020 16:00 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBWhat do you do when you’re fighting for survival and balancing grief on a societal level at the same time? This is a question many of us are facing now and asking ourselves in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the historical reference points we can access are stories from the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Dubbed the Spanish Flu, the deadly pandemic killed at least 50 million people worldwide, including a half a million in the United States. These numbers can sound abstract, or worse, like co...
Word Sound Power: A Self Determined Lexicon for Commemorative Justice with Historical Strategist Free Egunfemi Bangura
April 28, 2020 13:33 - 1 hour - 63.7 MBIn Richmond, Virginia, you encounter monuments, old and new – on Monument Avenue one-hundred-year-old Confederate generals stand alongside, since 1996, a statue honoring African American Tennis icon Arthur Ashe. Nearby, Kehinde Wiley’s new statue, Rumours of War, sits outside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, a new permanent sculpture moved there following its premiere in New York’s Times Square last year. But the makeup of Monument Avenue may soon change. Just in the last few days, and af...
Bearing Witness in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands with Conservationist Laiken Jordahl
April 15, 2020 15:00 - 39 minutes - 36.1 MBIn the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a staggering number of businesses and much of our public life are paused across the country in the interest of health and safety. There is one place where activity has amped up since the shutdowns – construction sites along the U.S. Mexico border. Our guest is conservationist Laiken Jordahl, who works as a campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity near Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument. He documents the heightened activity of border wall co...
No Return to Normal with Artist Mel Chin
April 08, 2020 12:00 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBIn times of crisis, in times of connection, artist Mel Chin makes his mark. A 2019 MacArthur Genius Award recipient, Chin’s artwork has been featured in major museums and biennials, in Times Square, the Halls of Congress, the TV show Melrose Place, and Monument Lab’s 2017 exhibition in the middle of Philadelphia’s City Hall. When you see Chin at work, you encounter an artist with purpose, with an eye toward building others up. “I think the lesson from all those situations and this situation...
Monument to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons with Eric García; New Monuments for New Cities Part 4
October 04, 2019 14:00 - 35 minutes - 33.4 MBLady Liberty, Uncle Sam, two figures who show up often as stand-ins for American politics in editorial cartoons and graphic narratives. But read between the images and the lines, and you can see how those symbols evolve with artists incorporating them to take on challenges of democracy. For artist, Eric García, based in Chicago, be brings these and other symbolic characters out in his work to engage nationalism, white supremacy, and exclusion. For his recent monumental poster, Monument to Lu...
Missing Democracy with Coco Guzman; New Monuments for New Cities Part 3
October 04, 2019 14:00 - 35 minutes - 33.4 MBOver the last few months, it has been a treat to get to know Coco Guzman, a Spanish-Canadian queer artist based in Toronto. Guzman draws, documents, and gathers stories that are public and intimate. They created Missing Democracy – modeled after pet posters posted on utility poles and community bulletin boards – where a Grumpy Cat stands in for democracy. “She's old and grumpy because of too many upsetting and or fake news,” says Guzman. We speak with Guzman about their approach to working...
Expanding Monuments with Regina Agu; New Monuments for New Cities Part 5
October 04, 2019 14:00 - 39 minutes - 36.7 MBRegina Agu has been researching and engaging green spaces in Houston, including Emancipation Park, especially to understand the legacy of communities of color in these spaces. As an artist, in a city where zoning laws, or lack thereof, impacts preservation, Agu also has seen the ways artists are on the forefront of innovating around and along with those parameters. As she notes, “I think that artists in Houston are actually quite vocal, some of them more vocal constituents who are really th...
Public Noise with Paul Ramírez Jonas; New Monuments for New Cities Part 1
October 04, 2019 14:00 - 41 minutes - 38.7 MBWhen you think of monuments and public art projects that provoke, that are critical and participatory, you think of Paul Ramírez Jonas. Born in California, raised in Honduras, and now a professor at New York’s Hunter College, he has produced renowned projects including Keys to the City, Public Trust, and the Commons, which have been huge inspirations to me and Monument Lab. Ask him to name traditional styles of monuments going back to antiquity, he can give you studied and detailed response ...
Reclaimed Water CC'd With Nicole Awai; New Monuments for New Cities Part 2
October 04, 2019 14:00 - 38 minutes - 36 MBWhen looking for monuments, most of the time we look up. But many artists have employed other strategies, from the ground up, to use concrete, bricks, or infrastructure to make their presence felt. Nicole Awai did just that . She is an artist and educator, born in Trinidad, based in NYC and Austin, where she teaches at the University of Austin. She was walking down the street and got hit with inspiration for a monument proposal poster that takes on the legacies of Columbus, colonialism, and ...
“Not Peaceable and Quiet” with Counterpublic Artists with Matt Joynt, Anthony Romero, and Josh Rios
June 19, 2019 11:00 - 54 minutes - 49.7 MBThis episode of Monument Lab, we recorded live from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, where Monument Lab has a research residency this summer. As a part of Public Iconographies, we are mapping monuments of St. Louis with a research team at the museum, in parks, and public spaces around the whole city, as a part of the Pulitzer’s Striking Power exhibition. To kickoff this project, we spoke to a trio of artists – Matt Joynt, Anthony Romero, and Josh Rios – as they prepared for their o...
Erasing the Border and the Wall in Our Heads with Social Sculptor Ana Teresa Fernández
June 07, 2019 12:09 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBThis week, news leaked of the Trump administration’s deployment of an unspecified number of military service members to paint stretches of the border reinforcements in the California town of Calexico. The goal: to improve the border’s "aesthetic appearance." There’s precedent to this. Wall builders go to great lengths to hide and distract from the brutality of border walls. For example, during the Cold War, the East German government ordered the Berlin Wall to be fully rebuilt more than onc...
The New Gatekeepers: Will Google decide how we remember Syria’s Civil War?
May 01, 2019 10:00 - 1 hour - 61.8 MBOn Monument Lab’s bulletin, we recently published “The New Gatekeepers: Will Google Decide How We Remember Syria's Civil War.” Written by Global Voices Advocacy Director Ellery Roberts Biddle, “The New Gatekeepers” examines how big tech companies like Google and Facebook are shaping our view of the historical record of war atrocities and other traumatic events. These companies increasingly use artificial intelligence to handle and sometimes censor shared content on social media posted from t...
Up With Ida: A Monumental Teach-In for Ida B. Wells at the University of Mississippi
April 03, 2019 10:00 - 56 minutes - 52.5 MBIda B. Wells was an investigative journalist, an educator, a suffragist, a truth teller. She was born in Holly Spring, Mississippi in 1862. As an African American woman, she moved to Memphis and then Chicago, as she built a national reputation for her civil rights work. She reported and revealed the horrors of lynching in pamphlets and publications including Southern Horrors and The Red Record. Today, her great-granddaughter, author Michelle Duster, carries on her legacy. She has retraced We...
In Pursuit of the Confederate Truce Flag with Artist Sonya Clark
March 27, 2019 06:26 - 1 hour - 78.6 MBThe Confederate Truce Flag is a little known piece of Americana. It was flown as a white flag of surrender and delivered to the Appomattox Court House, Virginia in April 1865. A piece of it is owned by Smithsonian. It is not as iconic as the Confederate Battle Flag. Artist Sonya Clark wants to change that through her new exhibition Monumental Cloth, The Flag We Should Know at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum.
Climbing the Statue of Liberty and Fighting Immigrant Family Separation with activist Patricia Okoumou
March 13, 2019 15:35 - 1 hour - 160 MBThis episode of Monument Lab features activist Patricia Okoumou, widely known as the woman who climbed the Statue of Liberty on July 4, 2018. Okoumou ascended the base of the statue as a direct action against the Trump Administration’s harsh and inhumane tactics of family separation at the US-Mexico border. Okoumou will be sentenced on charges of trespassing, disorderly conduct, and interference with agency functions. In the days before her sentencing, we spoke with Okoumou from Staten ...
Creating a Record of California Wildfires and Climate Change with Photographer Stuart Palley
March 06, 2019 11:00 - 58 minutes - 53.2 MBIn November 2018, a series of violent fires throttled California and its surrounding landscape. Outside of Los Angeles, the Woolsey Fire resulted in a three casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents. The Camp Fire, decimated the town of Paradise in Northern California, a small retirement community, which killed at least 85 people and cause 16 billion dollars in damage. It is one of the deadliest natural and social disasters on U.S. soil. This episode of Monument ...
There’s a Spirit in Everything” with Scholars Salamishah Tillet and Grace Sanders Johnson Live from the Free Library of Philadelphia
February 20, 2019 11:00 - 1 hour - 75.9 MBThis episode features two brilliant scholar-artist-activists Salamishah Tillet and Grace Sanders Johnson. It was recorded live from the Free Library of Philadelphia as a part of the 2019 One Book One Philadelphia festival. Tillet and Sanders Johnson have been friends of Monument Lab since the beginning, actually before the beginning. Tillet as a mentor, Sanders Johnson as a graduate school classmate and writing partner of host Paul Farber. Together, they spoke about how they approach memory...
Taking Down the Columbus Statue in Downtown L.A. with Organizer Chrissie Castro
November 29, 2018 08:01 - 42 minutes - 38.8 MBOn November 10, 2018, a statue of Christopher Columbus was taken down in LA’s grant park. City officials and members of LA’s Native American Indian Commission were present to watch. Hundreds gathered to witness the takedown. Chrissie Castro, vice chair of the commission, was there. “After, decades of demonstration and protests, and dialogue," shares Castro, "it was very emotional when the statue finally came down. You know, we had singers. Folks were clapping and yelling. And it was just a s...
Mapping the New White Flight in Georgia with Journalist Brentin Mock
November 20, 2018 05:01 - 1 hour - 57.3 MBBrentin Mock, staff writer for CityLab, reports on the role of justice and civil rights in the laws and policies that govern our lives, particularly in the urban environment. He has a long history of reporting on environmental justice and voting rights, and voter suppression. Monument Lab speaks to Mock about his recent piece for CityLab “The Strangest Form of White Flight,” a part of a larger series on the Cityhood movement in Georgia, which Mock describes as a Brexit-style secession to ca...
Crafting Resistance Across the Street from the White House with Artist Stephanie Syjuco
November 05, 2018 06:12 - 51 minutes - 46.9 MBStephanie Syjuco is an artist and professor from UC Berkeley. Syjuco is one of the four artists featured in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational opening this week across the street from the White House. She works on monuments by scaling them to handheld objects, newly imagined commodities, and tools for protest. - Monument Lab
Immigrant Family Detention Reimagined on the State Capitol Steps with Artist Michelle Angela Ortiz
October 29, 2018 04:01 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBMichelle Angela Ortiz, visual artist and muralist, has collaborated with mothers and their families at Berks, an immigrant family prison, several hours away from her hometown of Philadelphia. Ortiz has worked to bring the stories of these detained mothers and their families to prominent public spaces where powerbrokers may connect with stories of these mothers in new ways – including last year at Philadelphia's City Hall as a part of the Monument Lab 2017 exhibition. This week, Ortiz instal...
In Pursuit of a Dream Museum of Capitalism with Curator-Artists FICTILIS
October 22, 2018 04:01 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBThe Museum of Capitalism was co-founded by Timothy Furstanau and Andrea Steves of FICTILIS, a curatorial collective who the New Yorker has described as constructing “exhibitions and interventions animated by a playful interrogation of social institutions.” In 2015, Furstanau and Steves began opening up calls to architects, artists, and the broader public to dream up a museum for capitalism. The responses provoked speculation on how to tell the history of capitalism through artifacts and expe...
Designing Justice in New Orleans with Paper Monuments
October 15, 2018 04:01 - 1 hour - 57.1 MBPaper Monuments from New Orleans — led by Bryan C. Lee Jr. and Sue Mobley – grew out of the takedown of four Confederate monuments in the city last year. Rather than look to replace the toppled figures and move on, Paper Monuments has gathered hundreds of under-told stories about the city’s history on posters designed by artists and storytellers, and wheat pasted them across New Orleans. They have been tapped by the city of New Orleans to help re-imagine public spaces around empty pedestals....
Civil War Memory and Monuments to White Supremacy with Art Historian Kirk Savage
October 08, 2018 04:01 - 59 minutes - 54.4 MBProfessor and Art Historian Kirk Savage is one of the nation’s foremost experts on monuments and memorials. Savage is the author of several books including Monument Wars and Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America, which was recently reprinted in an updated edition from Princeton University Press. Savage’s landmark book reveals how African American soldiers were largely left off public monuments after the Civil War, in favor of sites dedicate...
For Freedoms Across 50 States with Artist Hank Willis Thomas
October 01, 2018 11:00 - 49 minutes - 45.6 MBArtist Hank Willis Thomas is a leading thinker on monuments and one of the co-founders of For Freedoms, the largest public art campaign in the history of the United States. Willis Thomas worked with Monument Lab last year in Philadelphia on the prototype monument All Power to All People, a monumental-sized afro pick installed across from City Hall. He also produced Raise Up on the grounds of the National Peace and Justice Memorial in Birmingham. A new survey of his work, Hank Willis Thomas: ...
Welcome to the Monument Lab podcast
September 25, 2018 18:32 - 1 minute - 1.16 MBWelcome to Monument Lab: A public art and history podcast. Each episode, we will be talking to artists, activists, and historians about the monuments we have inherited from the past and the people and movements who are critically engaging them now. These are the people building the next generation of monuments through stories of social justice and solidarity.