Heather McClure, New Mexico History Museum

Hi Everyone—I’m Linda Norris and work with Braden at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, and today (and for the last six months) I’m in upstate New York, where it feels like fall today!)

Hello! I’m Johanna Brown from Old Salem Museums & Gardens in Winston-Salem, NC

Greetings from Washington DC

John Diefenderfer from the NYS Archives.

Hi! Katherine Rogers. I work with Peerless Rockville in Rockville, Maryland

Katie Kolo, recent grad and aspiring historian from Alexandria, VA. Thanks for holding this event!

Hello! Henrietta DeGroot with National Park Service Planning

Good afternoon. Bellamy Mansion Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina (US).

David McKenzie from Ford’s Theatre.

Hello – Anna Gasha, PhD student in Historic Preservation at Columbia University in New York City. Looking forward to this webinar!

Tim Galsworthy, History PhD candidate at the University of Sussex (UK) researching American Civil War memory and the Republican Party. Also an affiliated scholar of the Emmett Till Interpretive Centre in Sumner, Mississippi

Greetings Everyone! Bellamy Mansion Museum Wilmington, NC

Good evening from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland - working on legacies of empire in the urban built environment found in Scotland and the UK

Natasha Reichle, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Anne Petersen from the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation in CA!

Helaine Silverman from U of Illinois. Working on labor heritage, particularly with regard to coal mining. I’d love the email list from this webinar. Thank you.

Bruce in NYC. Just visited the monument to three suffragettes dedicated today in Central Park on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment.

Oh great Bruce!

We were just chatting about that before the call. What was your impression of it?

The new sign is bulletproof

Please add questions, thoughts, links and anything else you want to share here!

The center is deciding what to do with the bullet-ridden sign

Sad that it needs to be bullet proof.

Tim, do you have a link to information about the sign?

https://www.emmett-till.org/emmett-till-challenge

There you go Braden

Anyone just joining, please introduce yourself!

And thanks Tim!

Adine: The Unitarians in Ocoee, Florida, researched lynching in their area and received a metal pillar from Montgomery . Also, what are your feeling about Susan Neiman’s Learning From the Germans that details how Germany educated its populations against Nazism and has removed all vestiges of the Nazi regime ?

Elka Weinstein, Museum Professional, Toronto, Ontario

that is great to hear that a community has received their pillar

Lyra Monteiro, public artist (The Museum On Site) & professor (Rutgers-Newark)

Adine . The Whitney Plantation in LA solves that problem.

MSU Emmett Till Memorial Project: Thirty-six freshman Mississippi State University architecture students will showcase their final first-year studio projects as part of an “Emmett Till River Site Memorial” poster exhibition at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Tallahatchie County.http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2020/jul/16/msu-emmett-till-memorial-project-and-usm-and-touga/ +https://www.msstate.edu/newsroom/article/2020/07/msu-architecture-freshmen-showcase-design-skills-emmett-till-river-site

Donations to Emmett Till Memorial pour in following white nationalist group's filming https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/2019/11/04/emmett-till-memorial-gets-donations-after-white-nationalists-film/4154831002/

Add more questions and comments here! What are you thinking about with monuments, what is challenging you, what do the panelists comments provoke for you?

Are “damaged” monuments the way forward? E.g. leaving up the Lee monument in Richmond as it currently is, daubed with messages and paint (etc.)? Then we can show how memorialisation is always contested and always part of a conversation

Or am I being too optimistic…?

I lived in Bristol so I have views on the Colston debacle

What statues are at the center of conversation in your community?

For Professor Thompson: In the legal perspective, what has to happen to respond to and reform policies/structures, so we can normalize the idea that added textual signs are not effective? Are there workarounds to existing legal obstacles (or what are the challenges to questioning laws that protect harmful monuments)?

To Braden’s question: The Emancipation Memorial in DC is really contested in our area. I went to a set of 3 competing rallies about it. After reflection, and in talking with colleagues and friends, I realized that the conversation I heard around it was going on different parts of the Four Truths (to use ICSC terminology). Most of the people advocating for keeping it were operating in the forensic truth of its origin and dedication. Most of the people who were advocating for removing it were talking about personal and social truths, of the messages that this statue sends to people today.

How can we protect the "good" monuments if we let the vandalized monuments remain? It seems like an easy dramatic way to contextualize for example the confederate statues, but is it leading to more problems?

As museums become stewards for divisive monuments, how can they be intentional or conscious about being a space for indigenous communities and culture, or enslaved histories or traumatic histories, and then also retain the material glorification of the oppressors of those communities?

Here in New Mexico, Statues of Juan de Oñate have been the focus of debate, and at least a couple have been removed.

Here in eastern North Carolina, it's mainly monuments to the Confederacy, but the definition of monument is expanding. The 1838 Fayetteville Market House is an example of a building that is being targeted by protests, damage, and discussions of demolition.

In a legal framework, could a solution be that there could be a federal mandate to remove these statues or can that be done only on a state/local level?

Thank you. I appreciate the perspective about the permanence of monuments.

A great example of how statues can reflect changing times is the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. It was a never-filled plinth that now has a different installation each year. Always super interesting! https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/arts-and-culture/current-culture-projects/fourth-plinth-trafalgar-square/fourth-plinth-past-commissions

love the idea of a different installation each year

Same!

So interesting...thank you for sharing Linda!

What do people make of the “Memento Park” approach to divisive monuments? Could this work with Confederate and colonial monuments or would it just create shrines and commodification?

Roosevelt protection: https://twitter.com/TheVelvetDays/status/1296916097799684096?s=20

Does anyone know how South Africa dealt with memorialization as part of their Truth and Reconciliation process?

University of Texas Briscoe Center took in the Jefferson Davis statue that had been outside there. They tried to contextualize it… I still think it didn’t really work though. I went to a talk at AASLH where the curators talked about trying to make sure you couldn’t see the statue without seeing the context of it. But the scale difference and separation still didn’t work, I think.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/jefferson-davis-back-ut/

People might be interested in this artistic response by a mercury music prize winning musician of the Scottish national portrait gallery - responding to statues and memorial portraits of 18th century figures of the enlightenment who are now recognised as enslavers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt1umirFdY4

South Africa resource https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/rhodes-must-fall-founder-racist-statues/

I think it creates dangerous shrines myself

For those interested in museums and protest, Tear Gas Epiphanies by Kristy Robinson is an extensive look into this topichttps://www.amazon.com/Tear-Gas-Epiphanies-McGill-Queens-Beaverbrook/dp/0773557016

I think the communist park model is pretty weak, and in many places, serves as just a tourist attraction.

I went to Memento Park in Budapest. It was fun for me to go round (from my nerdy scholarly perspective) but there was no real message. Plus you could buy cheap trinkets so it was part of a commodification and neutralisation of the statues

Westchester County included what’s now the Bronx. What about sites there?

Some of what Adine Usher said reminded me of a project here in Wilmington--a new statue to the US Colored Troops (Civil War). https://cameronartmuseum.org/index.php?c=usctpublicsculpture

Thanks for a great discussion. Have to drop off the call but appreciate everyone's time and thoughtfulness

Thanks for coming John.

This year’s Fourth Plinth that I saw in December—A re-creation of a protective deity destroyed by Islamic State in Iraq has been unveiled on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth – rebuilt with 10,500 empty date syrup cans by Michael Rakowitz

It’s not a 19th century statue.

19th century style, as the sculptor said during the unveiling.

What about calls to sandblast Stone Mountain?

Absolutely Melanie! In Edinburgh, the monument to Henry Dundas ( politician who delayed the abolition of a slavery by 30 years) has just last week had new interpretation panel - this does not address the broader context of institutional white supremacy in Britain, and how it is reflected in design of built environment. Much of this is wholly ignored and is perpetuating wide social views that issues of race are not pertinent to this discourse in Scotland - also fuelled by push back from the ancestors of the family, who refuse to acknowledge the role of Dundas in delaying abolition, and Scotland and Britain’s role in establishing and perpetuating institutional racism throughout history

Kirsten, a great point I should have raised in my speaking about the indigenous workshop—Speakers made the poin that land rights are the critical feature, because the entire landscape is one of theft and until these issues are addressed, smaller memorials might be meaningless.

I think the laser show at Stone Mountain is almost more offensive than the reliefs themselves!

a laser show? Didn't know that

Wonderful observations and much food for thought. Thank you to everyone involved.

Great conversation and comments from everyone, plenty to think about for me!

Thank you so much to all - so interesting and lots to engage with moving forward

Thank you to everyone for joining the conversation.

Thank you very much for joining us, please fill out this survey: https://forms.gle/GZDQCTudEUeJA2nk7

Thank you all! Fascinating conversation, much appreciated.

thanks so much to everyone for your incisive reflections and important considerations

Adine: Cathy Sears and Sarah Cox are leading the communutyslave project in Irvington, NY

These are the types of conversations my museum needs right now, so thank you. Looking forward to the next two.