New Approaches to Commemoration in America Are Taking Root

When our nation’s reckoning with racism reached a breaking point in 2020, many turned to town squares, local parks, and city streets to gather with our communities in solidarity, resistance, reflection, and action. But when we looked around us—at our public statues, monuments, and memorials—we saw a commemorative landscape that was disproportionately white and male; overwhelmingly focused on war and conquest; and in some cases, openly celebrating histories that perpetuate white supremacy. Taken together, these sites were telling a national story that left out the multitude of stories about the people and communities that helped shape our nation.

Today, America’s commemorative landscape is starting to look different.

Beyond corrective actions including the removal of harmful statues, communities across the country are in the midst of thorny discussions about what’s next for American monuments—and especially what it will take to animate a more complex and complete understanding of our collective past.

The shift we’re seeing is no more evident than in the recent set of nine Mellon grants, totaling $25 million, to municipalities that are working on large-scale, cross-sector projects to transform their commemorative landscapes. Whether through the examination of existing monuments or the creation of community-initiated public art installations, each city is tackling this challenge in ways that reflect their local context, histories, and populace. 

Thanks to Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art and history studio based in Philadelphia, for the first time we have a comprehensive understanding of how the American Story is currently told in our public spaces.

Funded by a $2 million Mellon grant in 2020, their groundbreaking, data-driven Monument Audit showed what we had long suspected: our existing monuments misrepresent the full history of our people and institutions.

It’s time to turn a new page. And while it’s clear that the next chapter in our commemorative landscape will include many more voices, what that looks like is largely undecided. Who will design and build tomorrow’s monuments? What materials will they use? Whom will they honor?

Excerpt from the upcoming film "Landmarked: Pt 5. A Tribute to Fannie Lou Hamer," which captures artist Ada Pinkston's June 2022 performance atop the plinth of a former Confederate statue in Baltimore, Maryland. Directed by Rachel Clift.