Making Monuments Matter in 21st Century Democracies: Creating Sites for Critical Discourse, Social Justice, and Community Building
Thursday, October 10, 2024
5:30 pm
CUNY Graduate Center
What do monuments do in democracies, what do those who create and commission them expect of these works, and how do people perceive and react towards them? How can monuments be active tools to make democracies more democratic?
Monument protests and removals dominate media and academic attention. Undoubtedly, the question of how to deal with problematic heritage is crucial for democratic societies. However, another important development within monument making remains understudied. Increasingly, artists and commissioners look to monuments to function as tools to nourish and strengthen democracies. Given common perceptions of the genre as misused and outdated, this turn towards monuments is both surprising and significant.
We treat monuments as materialised acts of cultural memory raised intentionally to influence society. With our current research project, we invite rethinking the place of monuments in contemporary democracies, asking: What do monuments do in democracies, what do those who create and commission them expect of these works, and how do people perceive and react towards them? Most importantly we are interested in exploring how monuments be active tools to make democracies more democratic.
Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol, UK. He was Chair of the ‘We are Bristol’ History Commission (2020-2023) established after the toppling of the Coston statue. Tim has published widely on the social, cultural, environmental and landscape history of contemporary Europe, with a particular interest in the Holocaust and its representation.
Tanja Schult is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University, Sweden. She teaches Visual and Material Culture. Tanja has published widely on the commemoration of painful pasts, in particular the Holocaust, and on monuments of all shapes, including invisible and controversial ones, and explored the roles, functions and shapes monuments have in democracy.