The Monumental Project

The Hawaiian monuments landscape offers important differences to the rest of the monuments landscape known throughout the continental United States. One of their contentious monuments is the Captain James Cook Monument, an obelisk that exists at the site where Cook was killed. In this episode, we talk with Shane Akoni Palacat-Nelsen, the President and Executive Director of Hoʻāla Kealakekua Nui, who shares with us the history behin...

Today, we’re joined by Rivka Maizlish, Senior Research Analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center to talk about the center’s most recent edition of the Whose Heritage? report. The Whose Heritage? report documents the progress in Confederate memorial removal over the last two years and provides an interactive map documenting where these monuments exist and their current status. This is the third edition of this report that SPLC has ...

Many of our past episodes have focused on the South as the region with the most monuments of the Confederacy. However, the West isn’t immune from having controversial monuments as well. In this episode, we’ll turn our attention to the western United States, looking at Kit Carson and the controversial monuments that exist of him all around the wild west. We’re joined by Susan Lee Johnson, the Harry Reid Endowed Chair for the History...

Monument removal, relocation, and reinterpretation is a process that has several means to its end. For some, this process involves work from activists in the community appealing to political leaders. In other cases, decisions to rectify an oppressive monument come from the top down with local and state governments working with their communities in order to create a consensus around how a monument might best be dealt with. In this e...

While the George Floyd Protests of 2020 brought monuments of oppression into light primarily for Black Americans, social justice issues related to Palestinians came into primary focus more recently with the extreme escalation of conflict in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. However, violence in the United States against Arab Americans, including Palestinian Americans, long predates the current humanitarian crisis in the Middle Eas...

On September 29, 1526, 498 years ago, the first recorded shipment of captive Africans arrived with Spanish colonizers on the North American mainland in the Sapelo Bay region of Georgia. This is not well-known African America history specifically related to trans-Atlantic human trade. It is the start of a continuous pattern of exploitation, oppression, survival and resistance spanning more than three hundred years with a legacy that...

If you’ve tuned into the show before, then you know that most of our conversations are centered around public art, history and racial justice. The combination of these three things are the essence of what makes this topic so interesting: how does one tackle the artistic, historic and cultural meaning behind a public structure in the best way possible? For the most part, these monuments are city wide issues that permeate the public ...

When it comes to the conversation around Monuments of oppression, there are a few obstacles that usually come into play.

To start, there's the Daughters of the Confederacy, the neo-Confederate association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers. They work all over the country to “preserve the legacy” of Confederate soldiers  by actively fighting against any Confederate monument removal. Additionally,...

Welcome to another episode of The Monumental Project on behalf of the Monuments Toolkit! In honor of Pride Month, we decided to look at an incredible monument collection that does an amazing job championing the LGBTQ+ community. The monuments in question? None other than The Legacy Walk in Chicago, Illinois. 


The LGBTQ+ community has made great strides in the past few decades in the field of public art representation....

In Philadelphia, monuments are more than just stone and bronze. They're time capsules that take us back to pivotal moments in American history. From William Penn, the Liberty Bell, to even the Rocky Balboa statue, Philadelphia boasts a wide range of public art that rivals the most famous cities around the world. In fact, Philadelphia holds the world record for the most public art in a single city. 

As we take a closer look ...

Urban planning has been a hot topic in recent years, with the world's cities experiencing rapid growth and transformation. As populations surge and infrastructure struggles to keep up, urban planners face a myriad of challenges. One such challenge is how to reconcile the need for progress with the preservation of our cultural heritage. This issue is especially pronounced when it comes to monuments that have come under scrutiny...

Women have been creating public art for centuries, but their contributions have often been overlooked or undervalued. For example, during the Renaissance period, female artists were often relegated to the role of assistants or copyists, and their work was rarely recognized as being equal in quality to that of their male peers.

Despite these challenges, women have made significant contributions to the field of public art ov...

As stated in our last episode, Controversial monuments and North Carolina unfortunately go hand in hand. The first Confederate memorial in North Carolina, an unnamed Confederate Soldiers Monument in Fayetteville, was built in 1868, only a few years after the south lost the war. Since then, Confederate memorials have been prominently displayed in the Tar Heel State. 

Many of these monuments, as is the case with most around ...

North Carolina, similar to Virginia, is a state that’s had their fair share of confederate monuments in the public eye. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are 173 Confederate symbols across the state, 42 of those monuments standing in front of state courthouses. This has created a fair amount of unrest in the state on many levels. One example is Enfield, a town based in Halifax county, in which mayor Mondale Robins...

As this year comes to a close, we would like to take the opportunity to reflect on some of the highlights of The Monumental Project. 

We have 8 exceptional episodes under our belt, speaking to people from all over the country on a variety of different topics inside the umbrella of cultural heritage and monuments of oppression.  We can't wait to see what 2023 brings!

Tune in next year as we sit down with more trail...

When it comes to cultural roots, the west coast is rich with relevance for so many groups of people. One group in particular is Native Americans. New Mexico is no different, with 23 Native American tribes that are federally recognized in the state. Native American history is celebrated today in museums, the arts, festivals and many other forms of cultural significance. 

However, one controversial monument still stands. The...

US/ICOMOS prides itself on connecting with outstanding leaders in the field of historic preservation and racial justice. Collaboration is a central value to the Monuments Toolkit, and we believe that the more we learn, the better we can serve the American people and our listeners around the world! A prime example of this comes this month, as we spoke with Bonnie McDonald from Landmarks Illinois. 

As President and CEO of La...

Up to this point, the Monuments Toolkit has sat down with leaders in the academic community, activism community and even politics to gather different approaches to the conversation around monuments of oppression. This month we’ll be speaking to an organization in the artistic community for a different point of view. 

To many, these monuments are nothing more than representations of dark times in our nation's history. But in the...

While there are countless examples of controversial monuments around the country, very few have garnered the attention that Richmond has created with Monument Avenue, a fourteen-block-long, tree-lined residential boulevard cutting across central Richmond

The reason for its controversy? Well for over 100 years, the street was riddled with Confederate monuments. Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, Matthew Fontaine, J.E.B Stuart a...