THE CONTESTED HISTORIES INITIATIVE (U.S.)

Consider the artwork of Bhen Alan which utilizes weaving to provide commentary on The Hiker statue in Providence, Rhode Island. This monument commemorates American soldiers who fought in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines during the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War.

Through binding the statue with the artist’s weaving of a traditional Filipino mat called a “baníg,” the original meaning of commemoration was transmuted into a celebration of Filipino Independence, diasporic connections, and “cultural resistance.”

This new meaning was further activated through the performance of Filipino folk dances and communal activities, including a weaving workshop, which took place around the statue.

Consider the controversy of Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park in Boston, Massachusetts. Within the park, a statue of Columbus was tagged in 2004 with the word “murderer” in 2004, beheaded in 2006, marked with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in 2015, and decapitated once again in 2020.

These separate acts of defacement, although criminal offenses, document how celebratory estimations of Columbus are being revised. As Mahtowin Munro (Lakota) of the United American Indians of New England stated: “I don’t think that their feelings about loving Columbus should be privileged over the genuine damage that we feel as Indigenous people by going generation after generation where Columbus is held up as some kind of hero” (Cultural Survival, August 20, 2020).

Acts of defacement, while often done under the cover of night, still might indicate shifting perspectives or the emergence of previously excluded views from public appreciation.

Consider the public posters developed around the “Statues Also Die” exhibit in Connecticut, which sought to radically reinterpret acts of memorializing. Through an open call that asked the public to create new monuments, participants were able to submit designs and representations for the Connecticut landscape.

One proposal was called, “The Potential of Nothing,” and consisted of “a monument pedestal in which nobody stands, a place to look, to imagine instead the potentiality of what could be there, the unnamable, and hidden to take place in the forefront of the mind” (Real Art Ways, January 6, 2021).

While commemoration is typically focused on the past, collaborative or fabulated monuments can provide opportunities for reflecting about and making statements about the future as well. Fabulation can reconceive of monumentalization in brand new ways.

Consider the toppling of a statue to King George III in New York City which occurred after the approval of the Declaration of Independence. The destructive argument can best be illustrated by this act of “symbolic regicide.”

Here the commemorative landscape was being radically remade while the country was undergoing its own transformation.

As soldiers and fervent participants dismantled this statue, they did so with the intention of never again monumentalizing their former sovereign. In fact, as U.S. Postmaster Ebenezer Hazard noted the felled statue was to be repurposed for war: “[The king’s statue] has been pulled down to make musket ball of, so that his troops will probably have melted Majesty fired at them” (National Geographic, July 1, 2020).

Consider the case of the Middle Passage and Transatlantic Slavery. While monuments to the “peculiar institution” of slavery are often underrepresented within our commemorative landscape, the slave-trade, or what poet Lucille Clifton called “a bridge of ivory,” is altogether absent.

It is for this reason that researchers, such as Ole Varmer, have argued for memorializing the Atlantic seabed: “The remains of the slave trade are tangible and intangible heritage that should be memorialized as the final resting place of the victims of the slave trade” (Duke Today, November 10, 2020).

The absence of monuments testifies to the unevenness of power and provides a good reminder that not all communities and heritages are represented in public space.

Consider the case of Mount Rushmore, a monument constructed upon The Six Grandfathers (Thuŋkášila Šákpe). The preservationist argument can best be illustrated in remarks Donald Trump made during the Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration: “This monument will never be desecrated —these heroes will never be defaced, their legacy will never, ever be destroyed, their achievements will never be forgotten, and Mount Rushmore will stand forever as an eternal tribute to our forefathers and to our freedom” (The White House, July 4, 2020).

The preservationist argument instead of considering the historical theft of the Hé Sápa (Black Hills) and the wishes of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ for the return of their land, deem these political points to be immaterial. For once included in the commemorative landscape, the aim is only to safeguard the monument.

Consider the dearth of monuments to women in the United States. According to the National Monument Audit, only six percent of statues in the country represent women. This gendered discrepancy has resulted in renewed calls for public representation.

Take, for instance, the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument, dedicated and built to Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 2020. Meredith Bergmann, the artist who designed the statue, argued that the depiction of suffragettes would break the “bronze ceiling” around monumental inequality and provide “a positive image of diverse women working together to change the world” (Hyperallergic, August 13, 2019).

The construction of this monument was not however without some controversy. Since the original design only included Anthony and Stanton many felt that the project was whitewashing and erasing the contributions of Black women. It is important to remember that construction is not a foolproof method.