Thread by @SbaArch

THREAD: As the Statues Fall: A Conversation about Monuments and the Power of Memory

Featuring: @lavaughnbelle, @silverjackson, Dell Upton, and Tsione Wolde-Michael
Moderated by: @tichecain
Sponsored by: @SAPIENS_org, @SbaArch, @CIAMS_Cornell
Livetweeting by: @lauraheathstout

Moderator @tichecain says we'll be starting soon.

There are almost 1000 people from around the world on the call!

.@tichecain introduces herself, including her position as a postdoc at @Princeton and her work on violence and heritage in Quintana Roo, Mexico.

.@tichecain acknowledges the context of the moment in which we convene and names many Black people killed by police. #BLM #saytheirnames #sayhername #mmiw

.@tichecain acknowledges how our fates are tied together, and how state violence crosses borders and differences. She also encourages us to think about the land we live on and from whom it was stolen native-lands.ca

.@tichecain: In this moment, there are statues coming down around the world: of Columbus, Confederates, slave traders, and others. @Wikipedia is hosting a crowdsourced list of monuments taken down since George Floyd's death.

@tichecain: Artists are helping us think through what should happen with these monuments. We will take on that theme today.

@tichecain: thank you to @ArchFieldNotes and @aflewellen of @SbaArch, Adam Smith from @ciams_Cornell, Dr. Danilyn Rutherford of @WennerGrenOrg, Dr. @drchipcolwell of @SAPIENS_org. She also thanks tech staff, captioner, me for tweeting.

@tichecain introduces @lavaughnbelle and her art, which puts Black women into public places.

@tichecain intoduces @SilverJackson, a Tlingit/Unangax multidisciplinary artist from Alaska.

@tichecain: @silverjackson's recent installation "Shadow on the Land" engages directly with archaeology.

.@tichecain introduces Dr. Dell Upton of @ucla, an architectural historian who studies the African-American built environment. His recent book "What Can and Can't be Said" is about monuments in the South.

.@tichecain introduces Tsione Wolde-Michael of @amhistorymuseum and @NMAAHC. Her recent work documents the history of #blm #blacklivesmatter movement from 2012 to the present.

.@tichecain invites us to use #AsTheStatuesFall!

.@tichecain: What is different about this moment? Why now? What does this moment mean for the future of monuments? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: We are in a moment with a global audience for a global movement. I was at first very despondent, because we've seen this before. This seemed like just another cycle, but as statues started coming down, I became hopeful. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: What is the relationship between the physical violence against bodies like #georgefloyd's and the symbolic violence done against statues? #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: People are taking the landscape and our history into our own hands. Usually heritage workers frown on destruction, but now we are celebrating it. This moment has been decades in the making - these changes have not been quick, but painfully slow #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: How many Black people had to die for us to get to this point?

.@SilverJackson: White supremacist narratives are not sustainable for the health of our communities and our environment. These myths are revealed when we speak truth. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: We must recognize the truth that we live in a society that prefers keeping monuments to traitors to actually facing our historical trauma. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: The people who have contended with the pain of history should get to decide what happens with these monuments #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: What about the monuments that don't fall? What is happening in the communities (like in the USVI) that are *not* taking down these statues? USVI is still colonized, living in a landscape of symbolic violence. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: There are still legal and social constructs that are precluding movements to take statues down. Some take things into their own hands, but what about naming of buildings? That requires bureaucratic process. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: This has happened so quickly - #covid19 has given us time, focus, empty streets for actions. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: These statues were always controversial, but those who objected were ignored. Now they are holding/taking power. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Alabama law prevents taking down or altering Confederate monuments. State sued Birmingham for putting plywood over an inscription on a Confederate monument and won! #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Now more towns and cities are making that choice, and will show state how futile that law is. There are people intentionally retaining a racist social order using diversionary arguments about heritage to hide that they support racist values. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: Does shifting attention to monuments lead us to focus on symbolic change rather than systemic change? What work can be done at the intersection of symbolic and systemic change? Are they separate? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson Our communities are not here to tiptoe around systematic change. We need it right now. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@silverjackson suggests melting down statues, selling the bronze, and using it to fund schools and art programs. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Colonization is a material reality and also happens in your being. We must think symbolically, because in our imagination is where we have the most power. We can divest symbolically, then move to the material. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Art creates a space for conversation, so that we can move to making change. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: People ask me, "will removing a monument really change anything?" and I say "if you won't even do something as simple as removing a monument, how are you going to make change?" #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Monuments create a landscape of our civic life. Even if you ignore the statue of Robert E. Lee, that statue says that he belongs in our civil life, and deserves to stay there. We must move beyond individual monuments to look at the whole narrative #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: We're now tearing down not just Confederates, but Columbus too, and that scares people because it asks them to question their whole narrative of their lives. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Copenhagen monument of Mary Thomas doesn't have a lot of historical narrative around it. There's too much to fit on a plaque. Even if you don't know who she is, it's a 2 story image of a Black woman, which shifts your understanding #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: It makes you wonder who she is, makes you recognize that other people have heroes that you don't know anything about. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@silverjackson: US is young compared to the indigenous history of this land. These monuments on unceded land erase that long indigenous history. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@silverjackson cites Capt. Cook statue in Sydney, Mt. Rushmore, as further examples.

Wolde-Michael: #BLM asks us to imagine what a pro-Black way of remembering might look like. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: #BLM asks us to imagine what a pro-Black way of remembering might look like. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: The defacing of the Charleston statue of John Calhoun could have gotten people killed - it wasn't symbolic to them! #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: #BLM calls out museums and institutions for just giving lip service, asks for real change. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain invites Wolde-Michael to talk about her curation of #BLM material culture. Should we leave defaced plinths of removed statues? How do they fit into the material archive of this moment? #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: @smithsonian initiative brings together @amhistorymuseum @NMAAHC @SmithsonianACM to collect #Blacklivesmatter material culture.

Wolde-Michael: How do we document political activism? Not just the usual ways of collecting ephemera, but also documenting police violence. Work done in close collaboration with organizers & communities #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: You can think about things in the environment that have become invisible in order to reshape the archive to emphasize different histories. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle asks @SilverJackson about his work in Australia - statue of Captain Cook upholds narrative of discovery. Even in US, indigenous communities fight erasure. The lack of indigenous history is convenient for colonial government. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: 250th anniversary of Cook in Australia is being celebrated by colonial government, like US celebrates 4th of July, Alaska Day. There is a colonial shadow on the land, cast over our histories. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson The excavation of the shape of the Cook monument is archaeology, which is extractive and largely used to uphold white supremacy. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: We are told "that is history, don't erase it," when our history has been stolen and placed in museums to be presented as dead and gone #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: There has been a lot of discussion of figural monuments. What is the power of the genre of the figurative monument to elicit public response? What are your thoughts on the notion of monumentality and how it might shift moving forward? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: I've participated in 4–5 projects thinking through monuments, and I don't always go to the figurative.

Ex: historic house in Philly, other artists didn't make a figure because we don't know what the person looked like. I did, because of important history of African bodies in the space, as a disruptor. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: In other cases, we don't need a figure, e.g. 20 ft. libation cup as monument to Middle Passage. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Greco-Roman monuments to emperors are meant to deify them. They are idols. Maybe there should not be figurative statues of individuals: removes their humanity, prevents us from seeing them in their fullness #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Example: Montgomery National Memorial for Peace and Justice - figural but not about deifying an individual #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle The declaration of presence and humanity is essential. Figurative monuments can do that, but can also be connected to empire. But I'm hesitant to say they don't have a place as a counter to the devaluing of Black life. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Engagement with a figure is also different from passive admiration - @lavaughnbelle's title "I am" invites that engagement #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: @lavaughnbelle used the figures of herself and others to form a monument to Queen Mary, which was seen as blasphemous. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: People are now exploring other kinds of monumentality to see alternative histories. Making monuments isn't just a white practice! #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: There is an opening, if we have a renewed interest in community knowledge and how it shapes heritage work. As a curator, I might see a different thing as emblematic than the organizers do! #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Different communities might go more or less figurative as they choose how to remember. These decisions don't take place in a vacuum - political situation determines who gets to choose what goes in public space, what forms. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: My work looks at what monuments we already live in, e.g. baobob tree where rebelling women were burned. When we see that tree, we know that story. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle Songs about Queen Mary can also be monuments to her. There are many ways to monumentalize and remember. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: The act of removal is political. In colonization, all of our objects were removed, our language, our children, our rights, our food sources. The conversation now represents a shift of power to communities. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: In 1960s in Juneau, a Tlingit village was burned down to make a harbor. I designed a 40 ft. totem that represents that. It's a healing pole - healing through the training and practice with apprentices, marking that land #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: It's not just the object, but all the community engagement around it. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: There are countless monuments to people who participated in colonization. Lincoln ordered the largest mass hanging of indigenous people. Who are we monumentalizing? #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: The question is: who gets to decide who was a good person and who was a bad person? #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: People say that the good in Jefferson, Lincoln outweighs the bad - but the people saying that are not the descendants of those they enslaved or killed. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: How do we think about places where horrible and important things happened, but you can't see it in that place afterward? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: People have been constructing monumental landscapes for so long, not just individual statues. There's such a wide breadth of methods and decisions that can be used to commemorate. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: If we accept that some monuments should be taken down, what should we do with them post-removal? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Depends on context, community - in some communities, conserving these monuments would be egregious. Open to burying them, as an interesting gesture. Loves throwing them in ocean, like in Bristol #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Depends on the monument. Confederate monuments are basically mass-produced, have no aesthetic value, could easily be destroyed. Could line them all up in Reconstruction historic park. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: Or use the material to make art! People who made them didn't think they were anything special! #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: We should be talking more about dealing with the effects of systemic oppression on communities, rather than talking so much about what to do with the statues. Sure, make art with them, but focus on systemic change. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Does art always need to be permanent? Not all art is permanent. These don't need to be permanent. They can be destroyed or replaced. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: What's permanent anyway? Permanence is about passing on and leaving the community with something better than what we were given. Contribution over permanence. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: There's no single response that will work everywhere. The removal must be paired with truth-telling and reckoning with past, centering harmed communities. #AsTheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: There's also violence being done to monuments to Black and Brown people, like the Emmett Till sign that is full of bullet holes. We must welcome the options of destroying, restoring, retelling, unearthing. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: How do we differentiate between the commemoration of systemic violence and the commemoration of war? What violence do we commemorate? How do we deal with the violence of our society? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain: Are there particular contexts in which monuments are acceptable? e.g., confederate monuments in cemeteries.

Upton: These monuments were put in cemeteries to disguise their real meanings. During reconstruction, federal gov't wouldn't allow celebration of Confederacy, so people got around that with cemetery monuments. #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: There's also a distinction between monuments in public spaces (statements of general values) and those on private land. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: There are so many ways monuments come into public space, which shape the meaning that they take. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle General public may not see differences between artist-led, public-led, wealthy-person-led projects. #AsTheStatuesFall

.@tichecain clarifies question: How do we deal with the idea of memorializing the war dead, and how that's tied into memorializing what they were doing in that war? Differences between monument and memorial? #AsTheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Vietnam War memorial - commemorating people who were doing what they thought was their civic duty, yet they were involved in empire! We have this impulse to honor war - should we really be doing that? #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: War memorials cloud this discussion in many ways. Confederate memorials are at the start of this - shift from the issues of the war to the abstract idea of duty. What were they doing their duty to? #AsTheStatuesFall

Upton: One of the common defenses of Confederate monuments is that they are war memorials. But what were those soldiers serving? #AstheStatuesFall

If we have American Revolutionary soldiers at one end and 9/11 hijackers at the other end of a spectrum, where is the line between acceptable and unacceptable? Where do Confederate monuments fit? #AstheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: This brings up how we talk about police as doing their duty in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Are there righteous forms of violence? If so, how do we memorialize them? #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Are museums the space for these monuments to go when they come down? #AstheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: If we put the monuments into museums, we must also invite in artists from affected communities. Don't JUST display the awful monument, but also positively engage with living community. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: There isn't really a robust lit on the pros and cons of taking in removed monuments. There's not really a clear solution. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Usually it's not museum professionals who are calling to put the statues in museums. It really depends on the museum! It's telling that Black-owned museums haven't rushed to take in monuments! #AstheStatuesFall

.@silverjackson: If museums take in removed monuments, let them be Trojan Horses, to let in the community and its artists for engagement!

Wolde-Michael: Does it make sense to use museum resources conserving these statues? Especially if museum is already underfunded! #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Do you keep the plinth? Or not? Without the plinth, power may be stripped away. In a museum, the monument might change and become more palatable! #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Museums have an obligation to truth-telling and research. Not everything needs to be preserved. Museums are uniquely positioned to tell meaningful stories, and that can be done well, but it has to be done with the right objects. #AstheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: In the Caribbean, there are all these plantations where the great houses are restored and the homes of enslaved people are not. What is valuable enough to be preserved? #AstheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: One issue with putting monument in a museum is that community then can't access and change that monument. #AstheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: Things in museums do NOT have to be exhibited, as is the case for many stolen Native objects in collections. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: I like the idea of taking in defaced and destroyed monuments, if you're going to take in monuments. There can be so many multimedia, artistic ways of actively engaging with these monuments. #AstheStatuesFall

.@tichecain What about virtual museum or archive? Esp. since our lives are so digital now. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Virtual archives and collections are a great way to give communities access. #AstheStatuesFall

Upton: Scale and physicality are important parts of the power of a monument, which would be lost. #AstheStatuesFall

Upton: Some defaced monuments should stay in place, stay defaced, to remember that history of defacement. #AstheStatuesFall

.@silverjackson: We can have these conversations *without* the monuments taking up valuable space, as we are doing right now. #AstheStatuesFall

.@tichecain What can we do with the monumental as a mode of repair? What are the practicalities of that work? Should we memorialize past violences or past successes, moving forward? #AstheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: I want to see all of it, in all combinations! As an artist, you first respond to what a community asks you to do, usually. What will communities start to ask artists to commemorate? #AstheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: In Bristol, the Colston statue came down and then a statue of a protestor went up, with no public engagement: opens conversation about who controls what memorials go up. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Each community's experience will be different. Their needs and harms will be different, so we must expect that what is created will be different. #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: We like to run to the idea of healing and reconciliation, but that is not what repair work demands. Repair work requires truth first, and cannot demand healing. Have you been angry for long enough? #AstheStatuesFall

.@SilverJackson: And then there's restitution. We can recognize land, but that's not the same as giving it back. What would it mean to give land back to indigenous peoples? What would our monuments look like? #AstheStatuesFall

Wolde-Michael: Land acknowledgement is a shift that invites us to action. Acknowledging that the land is stolen but not giving it back is a slap in the face. #AstheStatuesFall

Upton: SCOTUS says most of Oklahoma belongs to Native people... but what will the implications of that be? Will there be real restitution, or just symbolic acknowledgment? #AstheStatuesFall

.@lavaughnbelle: Monuments are not enough. Putting up sculptures honoring Black people is not full restitution, just one step. #AstheStatuesFall

.@tichecain We are closing the conversation today, but this is an initiation for many conversations and actions in the future. #AstheStatuesFall

Keep your eyes out for more resources, more opportunities for conversation, more calls to action. #AstheStatuesFall

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