Reimagined Monuments Take Over DC’s National Mall
A month-long exhibition features six artists who address the untold stories missing from the national park.
The National Mall in Washington, DC, is widely known as a place of controversial memorialization. Defined by its collection of national monuments and imposing federal buildings, the area has historically drawn countless criticisms over its perpetuations of colonialist iconography. The gathering grounds for protest and dissent — such as Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday performance, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the American Indian Movement’s Longest Walk in 1978, and the 1996 display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt — the National Mall has and continues to be a space where people envision and catalyze change.
In response to the site's exclusionary history, the Trust for the National Mall invited the public art non-profit Monument Lab to co-curate Beyond Granite: Pulling Together — a month-long outdoor exhibition spotlighting the many untold stories that are absent from the capitol park. Opening today, August 18, and running through September 18, the public art show will feature six “prototype monuments” by artists Tiffany Chung, Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star, Ashon Crawley, vanessa german, and Paul Ramírez Jonas.
At a time when education on critical race and queer theory is under attack around the country by conservative lawmakers and rightwing lobbying groups, the temporary prototype monuments put overlooked stories deeply rooted in United States history on a national platform. Monument Lab founder Paul Farber, who co-curated Beyond Granite: Pulling Together with art critic and activist Salamishah Tillet, said it was important to work with artists who could "tap into the histories that are present [in the National Mall], and open up possibility in these particular artworks."
