PHILADELPHIA — Next City today announces it is partnering with the High Line to present “The Future of Monumentality,” a speaker series at the unique intersection of art, design, and urbanism.
This series of two panels, moderated by New York Times critic Salamishah Tillet, will be held on January 27 and 28 and are open now for registration at nextcity.org. The series engages artists, historians, government leaders, and placemakers on the subject of public monuments, examining the civic, aesthetic, and historical contexts these influential objects inhabit.
Government officials, artists, historians, and protestors have faced renewed debates on the role of monuments in public spaces, particularly as many of these statues—often seen as symbols of structural racism and other inequities—served as prominent backdrops to protests in cities around the world throughout the past year and earlier. Inspired by these ongoing debates, the Future of Monumentality Speaker Series asks: Who determines monumentality in the urban public realm? And what does honest, equitable commemoration look like?