Teachable Monuments: Using Public Art to Spark Dialogue and Confront Controversy

Sierra Rooney (Editor), Jennifer Wingate (Editor), Harriet F. Senie (Editor)

$150.00

Publication Date: March 18th, 2021

Publisher:

Bloomsbury Visual Arts

ISBN:

9781501356940

Pages:

296

Description

Monuments around the world have become the focus of intense and sustained discussions, activism, vandalism, and removal. Since the convulsive events of 2015 and 2017, during which white supremacists committed violence in the shadow of Confederate symbols, and the 2020 nationwide protests against racism and police brutality, protesters and politicians in the United States have removed Confederate monuments, as well as monuments to historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Dr. J. Marion Sims, questioning their legitimacy as present-day heroes that their place in the public sphere reinforces.

The essays included in this anthology offer guidelines and case studies tailored for students and teachers to demonstrate how monuments can be used to deepen civic and historical engagement and social dialogue. Essays analyze specific controversies throughout North America with various outcomes as well as examples of monuments that convey outdated or unwelcome value systems without prompting debate.

About the Author

Sierra Rooney is Assistant Professor of Art History at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA. She is the author of numerous articles on public monuments and controversy. Jennifer Wingate is Associate Professor of Fine Arts at St. Francis College, USA. She was co-editor of Public Art Dialogue (2017-2020) and is the author of Sculpting Doughboys: Memory Gender, and Taste in America's Worlds War I Memorials (2013). She has published on representations of the domestic display of FDR portraits, WWI memorials, and public art. Harriet F. Senie is Professor of Art History at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, USA. She is the author of Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 (2015), The 'Tilted Arc' Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (2001), and Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy (1992). She has edited several anthologies on different aspects of public art.