Confederate and Colonialist Monuments Are Finally Being Toppled, But Few Can Agree on What Goes in Their Place

Emily Watlington | Art in America | 2nd October 2024

Debate about the purpose of public art has yielded little consensus. What then of the many statues commemorating leaders of the US Confederacy? Their removal has been difficult, but so too is deciding what replaces them. A celebration of abolitionist leaders? A commemoration of slavery’s victims?  Something apologetic? There is a view that “history needs new monuments” and that artworks “allow more people in”. Yet “spectacle is not repair.”