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Monument Lab Director and Co-founder Paul Farber shares insights on the reckoning and reimagining of our nation’s monuments. Over the last decade, artists, activists and cultural organizers have pushed the status quo in public art, especially to reckon with symbols and systems of power and injustice. Farber explores current practices and debates around art, memory, and history, on and off the pedestal, by sharing stories from Monument Lab projects and partnerships, reflections on recent monument events around the country, and a wishlist and action items for the next generation of monuments.

This event is part of the Center for Humanities and the Public Sphere’s multi-year speaker series “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” which responds to current challenges to rational public debate. Following Part II of the series in 2020-2021 entitled “Data & Democracy,” and Part I in 2019-2020 “Race and the Promise of Participation,” the 2021-22 speakers series turns to the question of transforming institutions in public life. For more information about the series, visit here.

PAUL M. FARBER is Director of Monument Lab. Farber is the author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall and co-editor of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. He also currently serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.

UF Series Funders and Co-Sponsors:

Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere (Rothman Endowment); College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; UF Research; African American Studies Program; Bob Graham Center for Public Service; Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship; Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research; Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center; Department of Biology; Department of Classics; Department of History; Department of Political Science; Department of Urban and Regional Planning; George A. Smathers Library; Levin College of Law; One Health Center of Excellence