Reading a Biography of a Mountain
Mount Rushmore, originally known as Six Grandfathers, gets its own biography, plus Sarah Bond on museums’ approach to polychromy and whiteness.
At its best, an artist biography lingers long after we've read it, continually reshaping our orientation toward a maker and their life. But what might a biography of a mountain look like?
Author Matthew Davis set out to answer this question of one of the most prominent symbols of American nationalism: Mount Rushmore, also known by its original Lakota name, Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe or Six Grandfathers. It echoes some of the same questions that drove Irvin Weathersby Jr., a scholar and writer, to visit monuments across the United States for his book In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space (2025).
Weathersby Jr. brings his own experiences to bear in his review of Davis's refreshing approach to art history and monumentalism, while scholar Sarah Bond considers the long-overdue shift in museums toward reckoning with polychromy and the myth of whiteness. Read their reflections below for a new way of seeing these monuments — and of understanding the biographies we construct of them.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Associate Editor
The Noah Davis Collection from David Zwirner Books
On the occasion of Noah Davis’s retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, explore a beautifully produced record of his oeuvre from David Zwirner Books. Bringing together full-scale surveys and close readings of individual works, these titles illuminate both the power of his paintings and the impact of his visionary work.
From Our Critics
How White Elites Drained Ancient Art of Its Color
The publication of Chroma represents an important shift by museums toward recognizing polychromy and its entanglement with white supremacy. | Sarah Bond
Chroma: Sculpture in Color from Antiquity to Today (2025), edited by Seán Hemingway, Sarah Lepinski, and Vinzenz Brinkmann
Chipping Away at the Facade of Mount Rushmore
In Biography of a Mountain, author Matthew Davis deftly weaves together interviews and stories that reveal so much more than a linear narrative of the monument’s history. | Irvin Weathersby Jr.
A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore (2025) by Matthew Davis
From the Archive
The Regal, Bloody, and Fiery History of the Color Red
Michel Pastoureau’s book tackles the complicated history of the color red, from regal hue of kings to scandalous shade of harlots. | Allison Meier
The Curious Histories of Colors, from Beige to Heliotrope
These stories about the origins of hues makes for a colorful read. | Claire Voon
ICYMI
8 Art Books to Read This February
The trailblazing sculptural practice of Edmonia Lewis, the birth of modernism in Montmartre, the luminous paintings of Kaylene Whiskey, and Gainsborough’s alluring fashion portraits are among our favorite reads this month. | Natalie Haddad, Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Lisa Yin Zhang
