AGAINST

BRONZEWASHING

AN INSTRUCTIONAL
GUIDE
.

first­
 a definition
Monuments have problems.
We’ll call them bronzewashing.

1. the physical ease of washing smooth,

sturdy, long-lasting materials like
bronze of any evidence of conflict,
and the speed with which this is done
after protest

2. the erasure of conflict or the

presentation of consensus around a
historical narrative, whether or not
that consensus exists (oftentimes, it
does not)
.

second in s
search of alternatives

Discursive proposals, partipatory

projects, temporary sculptures,
mobile pieces, additive interventions,
and performative protests produced
by contemporary artists, activists,
and public historians in the past two
decades demonstrate alternatives to
the pitfalls of traditional
monument-making.

A subset of these works, presented

here, demonstrate physical and
conceptual interventions made onto
monuments that can be replicated by
future publics and practitioners.
.

pause

As the third installment of the

Royal Society of Art’s Fourth
Plinth Programme, British sculptor
Rachel Whiteread casted the empty
fourth plinth of London’s Trafalgar
Square in translucent resin. Rather
than create a specific statement,
Whiteread solidified the absence of
a monumentalized figure.
 As part of Monuments for the
USA, curated by Ralph Rugoff at
the Wattis Institute of Contemporary
Art in 2005, Italian artist Enrico
David envisioned a monument to
Pepper LaBeija of the Harlem drag
ball House of LaBeija, exemplifying
the creation of monuments to
marginalized figures

replace
.

wrap

Karyn Olivier, a Philadelphia-based

sculptor, created The Battle is
Joined as part of Monument Lab’s
2017 exhibition in Philadelphia.
Sheathing the existing Battle
of Germantown Monument in
a mirrored skin, Olivier took
a monument which no longer
represented the histories of the
neighborhood’s diverse residents
and made it reflect their images on
its surface.
Tatzu Nishi worked with New York-
based Public Art Fund in 2012 to
encase the existing monument to
Christopher Columbus in Columbus
Circle in a living room, constructed
six stories in the air and furnished
with a combination of Nishi’s
own designs and furniture from
local businesses. The living room
demonumentalizes the sculpture,
turning it into a piece of decorative
art at eye level with the audience.
The scaffolding was also used by
the Parks Department to perform
long-delayed preservation efforts.

encase
.

transpose
 As part of Monuments for the USA,
Sam Durant’s Proposal for White
and Indian Dead Monument
Transpositions suggested the
recontextualization of existing
monuments to indigenous peoples
and white settlers killed throughout
American history onto two sides
of the National Mall, creating a
hyper-visible sort of scatter plot
demonstrating the racialization
of American remembrance and
forgetting.
.

confront Hank Willis Thomas’ All Power

to the People, a contribution to
Monument Lab’s 2017 exhibition
in Philadelphia, monumentalized
the civil rights era and the Black
Panther Party. The sculpture was
placed alongside a statue of Frank
Rizzo, whose legacy as a former
mayor and police commissioner is
tied to the violent policing of the
city of Philadelphia’s black and
queer communities.
Canadian artist Ken Lum, who
would later co-found Monument
Lab, proposed a double-sided
take on American history for
Monuments for the USA. He
proposed two side-by-side galleries
in which visitors who chose a dark
hallway would find eventually find
themselves surrounded by positive
interpretations of history, while
those who chose a lighted path
would find themselves in a negative
history room. contrast
.

remix

Janine Antoni’s contribution to

Monuments for the USA, entitled
Monument to Go, consisted
of an Anthora coffee cup, cut
up and reshaped into a work
that celebrated ephemeral but
significant objects, immigrant
contributions to the US, and
everyday spaces. She specifically
sited this work in “any diner” in the
United States.
 As part of public art exhibition
Culture in Action in 1993, Suzanne
Lacy and a Coalition of Chicago
Women collected the names of
100 important women of Chicago,
and mounted them on boulders
throughout the Loop. The work,
entitled Full Circle, then included
an awards ceremony to honor the
women represented.

collect
.

move

As part of Monument Lab’s 2017

exhibition in Philadelphia, artist
Mel Chin created Two Me, which
placed visitors on top of two marble
plinths, making the audience the
monument. This piece has since
traveled to Toledo, OH, where it
made a new public monumental
and puts forth the concept of a
mobile monument.
As part of the Fourth Plinth
Programme, Antony Gormley’s
project One and Other used a
cherry picker to transport 2,400
people to the top of the plinth
to stand on the platform one at
a time for an hour each for the
entire duration of the 100-day
project.

refresh
.

complicate

Throughout 2016 and 2017, East

Harlem Preservation and Black
Youth Project 100 staged highly
visual protests of New York’s
monument to J. Marion Sims. They
used performance art, spoken word
poetry, and lots of red paint to
highlight the pain Sims inflicted on
his victims.
 As part of a two-artist show with
Kenya (Robinson), Doreen Garner
performed Purge, a one night
performance in which several black
women performed invasive surgery
on a silicone likeness of J. Marion
Sims. New York’s monument to the
pre-Civil War physician has come
under fire for its representation of a
man who rose to fame by operating
on enslaved women without consent
nor anesthesia.

dissect
.

These proposals, temporary

sculptures, and interventions sought
to represent diverse publics, present
complicated, messy views of public
space, celebrate vernacular forms
and concepts, and dematerialize
existing monuments and monument
tropes.

Often, they foregrounded public

participation and/or feedback, and
eschewed the permanence and stasis
of traditional monuments in favor of
temporality and reflexivity.
In doing so, they suggest that
monuments need not be unchanging
objects, that existing monuments
can and should move and change
to reflect new publics, and that new
monuments made to be permanent
should in the very least represent
complex understandings of the
public, public space, and power.

takeaways
.
Books

Erika-Doss Memorial-Mania 2010

Marita-Sturken Tangled-Memories 1997

Kirk-Savage Monument-Wars 2009

Suzanne-Lacy Mapping-the-Terrain 1994

Dolores-Hayden The-Power-of-Place 1995

Shows

Mary Jane Jacob, curator Places with a Past Charleston, SC 1991

Mary Jane Jacob, curator - Culture in Action Chicago, IL 1993

Ralph Rugoff, curator Monuments for the USA San Francisco & New York 2005-06

Paul Farber & Ken Lum, curators Monument Lab Philadelphia 2015, 2017

Gabriel Florenz & David Everitt Howe White Man on a Pedestal 2017
further reading
 Jeremy Lee Wolin

taken from a senior thesis

in American Studies,
Brown University, 2019

created for Tiny Exhibits,

John Nicholas Brown Center
for Public Humanities
and Cultural Heritage

www.jeremywolin.com
@___jeremy_____