Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape

Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape - Hardcover

$34.95
Sale price  $34.95 Regular price 
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Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape

Monumental: How a New Generation of Artists Is Shaping the Memorial Landscape - Hardcover

by Cat Dawson
$34.95
Sale price  $34.95 Regular price 

Book Overview

How recent shifts in social politics have dramatically changed our relationship to monuments.

For centuries, monuments have telegraphed the values and origin myths of dominant culture in public space and on massive scale. They have signaled both who is part of a culture and who is not, often overlooking histories that complicate the stories they tell. Yet in the last 50 years in the United States, the role of monuments has changed significantly. Numerous historical monuments have been removed or toppled, bringing to the fore a long-repressed conversation about the relationship between the monumental landscape and national identity. In Monumental, Cat Dawson takes up the social, political, and art historical causes and ramifications of this important shift.

Examining the conditions that have led to and define this new era, Dawson reveals that these interventions are as indebted to the monumental tradition as they are to representational strategies that grew out of twentieth-century social justice efforts, from the Civil Rights movement to queer organizing during the AIDS crisis.

Since 2014, a new generation of artists has established a groundbreaking role for monuments, calling into question the very notion of what a monument is through novel investigations of how symbolic structures can be made and what stories they can tell. This book tells the important story of that sea change.
ISBN9780262049757
Author Cat Dawson
PublisherMIT Press
GenreEducation, Arts, History, and Design
FormatHardcover
PublishedAugust 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages272
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

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About Cat Dawson

Cat Dawson works at the intersection of art history and feminist, queer, and trans studies. They are currently Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History and the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Smith College and University Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

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