So welcome to the Contested Monuments webinar. This is the first webinar in the series on social justice and conservation. I'm Sarah Saitrin, the Education Coordinator for the Foundation of Advancement and Conservation. I'm so glad to have you all here with us today. This program was organized by FAIC and volunteers from the AIC Equity and Inclusion Committee, and the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network. I'm in Washington, DC, where the FAIC offices are located. I acknowledge that this is the traditional and ancestral land of the Piscataway and Anacostan peoples who have served as stewards of the region for generations. I'm going to give you a brief overview of the Zoom platform before turning it over to the moderators. You should be able to see the moderators and the panelists on your screen as well as the title slide. To turn on the captions, find the close captions button at the bottom of the screen and click the small arrow, then select show subtitles. We appreciate all of the questions submitted before the webinar and welcome additional questions throughout the session today. You can ask your questions by clicking the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and entering your questions there. Your questions will be sent directly to the moderators and they will address as many as possible. You can use the chat box to share comments and experiences throughout the session. Again, the webinar is being recorded and you will receive an email when the recording is available. I'll now turn it over to your moderators, Nyla Bird and LaLenia Villanova. LaLenia, you're on mute. Welcome everyone, thank you for joining us this afternoon for this really important discussion. My name is LaLenia Villanova, I'm a textile conservator and I'm also the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, Civic Art Conservation and Collections Manager. I'm from Central Los Angeles. The LA County Departments of Arts and Culture recognizes and acknowledges the Yavatom, the first peoples of this ancestral and unceded territory of Yanga that we now know as Central Los Angeles. We honor the Yavatom elders past and present and the Yavatom descendants who are part of the Gabrieleno, Tongva and Fernando Daniel Tatavium Nations. We honor and respect the many first peoples still connected to this land in which we gather and we commit our work in service to and in alignment with these values. My co-moderator is Nyla. My name is Nyla Bird. I use she, her pronouns and I am a second year in the Winnichir University of Delaware Program and Art Conservation. And I am currently on Lenapehokink, which is the land of the Lenapeh people in Delaware. The land extends through most of Delaware and parts of what are now known as Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I would just like to extend Wanishi, which means thank you in their language to them for stewarding the land past, present and into the future. Great. So, we would like to introduce our panelists. Next is Renee Ader, who is a public scholar who works at the intersection of art and history. She is passionate about three dimensional form, monuments, statues and public space. She considers the relationship of the monument to the landscape and geography, its form and history, and how public ceremonies and civic events shape how we understand monuments and public spaces. Renee's work helps the audience understand the meaning of monuments, how they shape over time and new ways to engage them in the present. And next, our next panelist is Brett Legs, who is an executive, who is the, excuse me, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, envisioned as a social movement for justice, equity and reconciliation. The Action Fund promotes the role of cultural preservation and telling the nation's full history, while also empowering activists, entrepreneurs, artists and civic leaders to advocate on behalf of African American historic places. Brent is a national leader in the US preservation movement and recipient of the 2018 Robert G. Stanton National Preservation Award. His passion for elevating the significance of black culture in American history is visible through his work, which elevates the remarkable stories and places that evoke centuries of black activism, achievement and community. We also welcome Ada Pinkston, an artist, educator and cultural organizer, living and working in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is a lecturer in our education at Towson University. Her work explores the intersection of imagined histories and sociopolitical realities on her bodies using performance, digital media, and mixed media sculptures and installations. Nyla, would you like to give a word about this current session and what we're going to be discussing? Yes. So the controversy surrounding Confederate statues and other contested monuments that celebrate slave owners, imperialism and white settler colonialism have been highlighted in recent months. Although activists have advocated for the removal of these monuments for years, the racial unrest this summer has brought these issues to the forefront of the cultural heritage sector and greater society as community activists empower themselves to take down such monuments all over the world. This has caused conflicted feelings in some conservators who want to support racial justice in public spaces, but who have been traditionally taught to always prioritize the preservation of outdoor sculpture and monuments. The conservators may also be conflicted if their employers task them with care of contested monuments, calling professional ethics into question. At the crux of the matter are questions surrounding who is valued in our society and who gets to make decisions in regard to public space and the interpretation of history. Competing values surrounding the removal of contested monuments will be explored with panelists introducing artists, historians and preservation professionals, as we just introduced. So I am going to stop sharing my screen and we will start with Renee and let her begin her introduction. You need to unmute yourself. I'm going to be for you to unmute so you can actually hear me. So thank you very much for the invitation to talk today and to be in conversation. My name is Renee Aider and as, and I'm a, I'm a scholar who was trained as an art historian but really works now as a public historian. My work, the current project that I work on is called contemporary monuments to the slave past, which I've pulled up here for you to look at the website. It is an Omega site, which is an open source publishing platform that I use mainly as a collections kind of management database. I have thought of this I have 170 monuments documented in this site so far. So not only do we have objects items and collections of objects, a lot of Frederick Douglass statues out there. I'm also running some exhibits are related to the objects that are in the database. The goal of the project was originally to, in some ways to create an archive of these monuments because people kept telling me they didn't exist. I found myself unfortunately a little sad that save outdoor sculpture. I hope that you can see this page as well. The save outdoor sculpture that the save outdoor sculpture program which ran for about five years no longer existed so many of the monuments that I work on are not in that database. And so it seems smart to me to try to gather them together at the core of this project. I look at issues of memorialization but also civic engagement. Really at the core of my project, as it exists in this iteration and Omega is to really think about civic engagement and community involvement and discussions around monuments and what they want, what they want to come down. What they want quite frankly to be preserved what kind of stories they want to tell. So that's the kind of the initial project that I work on. It also, I'm, I'm trying to develop it into a, and this is actually changing a little bit, but I have also taken all of my data out of the data base and quite frankly I'm telling a story on scalar which is another open source publishing platform. That is more geared towards telling a traditional story around objects that allows me to sequence objects in the text. So this is another kind of form and works in concert with the Omega site so scalars run it out of USC. So there's kind of a third. There's so there's these components that I realized that I've been working on that now I see as a as really being components that are part of a larger whole and I will point that out. I run a blog, and I should point out I'm one of these people who has in fact advocated for the removal of a very particular monument in my town, which is, and I have had lots of debates with people about this but it is the Thomas ball. It's the patient group which is in Lincoln Park here in Washington DC and lines up directly along East Capitol Street with the US Capitol building and in fact if you drew a line you could draw a line from this monument to the Lincoln Memorial. This monument is highly contested in Washington Eleanor Holmes Norton our delegate has called for its removal, and I'm in agreement with her and I've written a whole blog post about why I'm in agreement about the removal of this particular monument. It's what I will quite frankly call racist overtones are hard to miss with the crouching image of the enslaved person who has broken his shackle but that kind of contrast that between the clothed and unclothed body between black unclothed body and white cloth body is a serious issue. And it'll be interesting to see in Washington if this monument indeed comes down. But in general, I blog a lot about the monuments that I'm encountering as well as the conditions that I'm finding them in. So last year I took a drive along the New York State network of freedom to document monuments along that to Harriet Tubman and to emancipation. And lastly, I run a bit of a different project that is actually tied into this as well and it's on Instagram. I started a digital Instagram Memorial on June 1 of this year in honor of Mr. George Floyd. And I started it's called I Can't Breathe the Digital Memorial and I create each day a black and white memorial slide that goes on to Instagram as a memorial site. And so I have been doing this for since June and we continue to add names so the project is not over yet. I see all of these projects as deeply tied together. So if I have just one more minute. Can you see that screen now? It froze. It did it freeze again? Okay, give me one second. I will close out all this other stuff I think. I wanted to show you one other. I'm just going to close this all because this was causing problems. Is it better or no? No, it's not. Okay, so can I go back now? Yep, go back. Yeah, I think that doesn't like to switch from PowerPoint too. So the way in which these projects are all going to come together is that Omega will stay as a standalone database. We're about to crowdsource it at the beginning of November and so we're putting out a community call to bring it together with more monuments. And then my digital project will take this new kind of lean in towards a title that we've just tentatively come up with, called Meditations on Slavery, Morning and Memorialization. I will look at really death and mourning and tie it historically to some of the monuments I'm looking at but very much tie it back to the death of brown and black people by the police. It's a very core part of my project as well. And lastly I should just point out I've done quite a bit of work on these other kinds of sites. So I point to, for example, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. And I was really struck by Brent Legs' writing that preservation helps to contribute much to a forgetful society. So what does it mean to have restored molten field for the Tuskegee, where the Tuskegee Airmen trained and flew out of. What do these three look like, what kind of objects are collected in this space. So I, my monument projects rather broad in what I consider. And lastly I want to point to a problem that I face almost every time I go into monumental space. And that is, we spend a lot of money on developing monuments. We spend very little in conserving of them over time and this has me actually quite a lot of money on this project. This is the contraband and freedman cemetery memorial and here's some photographs I took in 2017. And I want to show you how clear and legible it is in 2017. And now something else is happening to the surface of the memorial and so the names themselves, the text is starting to vanish and what does that mean I assume some kind of, we can talk about this chemical reaction is occurring. And unfortunately I picked two cemetery memorials but last year I was at the historic Vale Cemetery and really shocked at the desecration that I encountered within the cemetery, where someone had knocked over the headstones, many of them within the black section of the cemetery. The concerns around preservation around the stories that we tell are really important to me they're rooted in my project, and I have grown increasingly interested in our problem of black cemeteries related to both enslaved persons but also free cemeteries that began you know most of them in the 1850s which are under extreme stress and duress right now. So thank you and I'll turn it over to the next person. Are you ready. I am. I'm going to share my screen. Everybody I'm delighted to be here with you today. And Sarah thank you for, or excuse me Renee thank you for that fantastic intro presentation. I want to start out oddly enough with a quote by the cultural icon Beyonce. And these words were communicated during when she was created her visual album lemonade and it really resonated with me, the past and the future merge to meet us here. Keep this in mind as I walk through my talk. The black experience we have been fighting legacies of slavery for more than four centuries. The black experiences are present in our everyday reality, and are reflected in our historic built environment and across our cultural landscapes. The preservation movement was founded by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Their successful advocacy would preserve the home of of President George Washington, a place called Mount Vernon which you see here on the screen. The birth of a of a movement. Over time has created cultural inequities in the erasure and omission of African American historic places from our historical record. We all know that the African American community has been fighting against urban renewal. This is a historic black neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina called Brooklyn, decimated by urban renewal. You can look at most major and mid market cities, and literally there's a story of historic erasure. You know I think of the deep dudes neighborhood in Oklahoma City. Of the Western neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky. Or even think about the U Street corridor in Washington DC. We continue to fight against redlining and disinvestment. Do you ever ask yourself why it's hard to go to any major city and find a thriving and vibrant black commercial district where historic buildings are are occupied and thriving. This is too often the condition within black historic neighborhoods. We continue to fight against racial terrorism. But I'll remember what happened in 2015 when a white nationalist would walk inside of this historic sacred church mother manual in Charleston, South Carolina. We ended up giving our largest grant last year of $150,000 to the church to help them to restore their historic sanctuary. But this is a story that is often too familiar. We continue to fight against disrespect, whether it is these horrible words spray painted on the second oldest standing black church building in the United States. It's called the African Meeting House in Nantucket, Massachusetts. And we are fighting to bring these vandals to justice. Whether it is someone typing on their keyboard during a conversation like today, or someone is expressing their cultural values on a historic site. This is who America is. And this last photo really is the essence of the work of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, it is to answer this question. This was during the Black Lives Matter protest movement here in Washington DC, an unnamed protester with spray paint these words on the side of the historic Decatur House. In the shadows of the White House, a historic space where enslaved Americans were held in bondage. This building is a National Trust historic site and operated by the White House Historical Association and the question is, why do we have to keep telling you Black Lives Matter. The Action Fund was born in the aftermath of Charlottesville in 2017. We remember this image where white nationalists rallied around a Thomas Jefferson sculpture on the campus of the University of Virginia. It didn't express our national values and it was the first time that historic preservation was part of a national discourse. We brought together some national leaders, and the result was how can we use cultural preservation, heritage and identity to begin the process of reconstructing American history and our understanding of ourselves. But how can we also begin to confront the miseducation of Americans. So the Action Fund was born $25 million campaign largest ever undertaken on behalf of American historic places. And this is part of our mission. In essence, the Action Fund is a movement to redefine a new American culture and narrative. We are working to build a true national identity that reflects our full diversity to create a more just and equitable society. We believe that preservation is a force for positive social change. The way that we do this is in partnership. We believe that new forms of partnership, interpretation and community is a future for preservation. We've got to build new audiences and bring new thought leaders into the movement. Here are the 20 social justice leaders that are part of the Board of the Action Fund, which is co-chaired by Darren Walker, who is the president of the Ford Foundation and actor and director Felicia Rashad. So I just want to highlight a few of our projects and our programmatic work and to demonstrate that preservation is a tool for equity. We've been working at James Madison's Montpelier. It is the home of the father of the Constitution. Over the last 20 years, this organization has been slowly building inroads with the descendant community of the formerly enslaved Americans here at this historic site. We have created a permanent exhibit called the Mirage Distinction of Color, which is fabulous if you have not seen it. But I think the most important work is developing shared governance and authority model where the newly established descendant community and nonprofit is exploring how they can share authority and interpretation and site management. We hope this becomes a national model for the field. The national grant program of the Action Fund is the signature piece of our work. I just wanted to highlight these numbers. So over three grant rounds, we have received almost 2000 proposals, requesting almost $200 million. This is a drop in the bucket of what the full need is, but it really speaks to the fact that our American Historic Places continue to be underfunded and undervalued. We have invested in 65 preservation projects across the United States with the goal of creating new models for preservation and raising awareness of this cultural significance and the importance of these cultural assets. Places like Claiborne Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, where the civil rights movement became more sophisticated and it moved beyond political activism and began to advocate for economic justice. Inside of the basement is where the I am a man posters where we're pressed and created. We provided $100,000 grant for them to hire their first preservation manager. Chaco Bottom, second largest slave holding site in the United States. If you visit it today, it is nothing more than concrete and parking lots. And what seems to be invisible is still rooted within the black community in Richmond. It is part of their collective memory. So we wanted to empower the community and give them the tools to be able to advocate for Memorial Park, and this is what their vision is. And I'm glad to say that Merrill of our stony supports the creation of the Memorial Park. It is now part of the city's land use plan. And I had the good fortune of moderating a conversation with him Wednesday five o'clock at our national conference, and we're talking about memorialization Confederate monuments and African American heritage. I'm sure some of you have heard of the legendary jazz musician Nina Simone. Known as the voice of the American civil rights movement. What's inspiring about this project is for New York City based visual artists as a form of arts activism and politics would save the house from demolition created LLC by it. We established a partnership with them, and other organizations. And I hope that this inspires other artists to follow in the footsteps to actually own steward and uplift places that at first glance same standing without historical meaning and value with this vernacular is reflective of the black experience and they're worthy of being preserved. So if you haven't seen it we just released on the 15th of this month I knew equity report, and it is highlighting 10 historically African neighborhoods from LA to Harlem and global Kentucky and beyond, and we're understanding the role of preservation and how it's contributed to issues of affordability displacement and gentrification. And you see the stats on the, on the right side it really speaks to the fact that African American historic places that face increased disinvestment demolition and negative impacts, and our historic African American neighborhoods. We're also working to create space for graduate students and professionals to help amplify the stories and the culture behind these places, like a freelance journalist Brianna Rhodes who's writing about our grantees to your rubber rich and who's producing a short doc I'm John and Alice Coltrane's house in New York. I think this is my last slide. I wanted to highlight that we are committed to introducing diverse youth between the ages of 16 to 25, introducing them to preservation trades and using this as an opportunity to grow the preservation economy and create job opportunities for individuals that look like this. And they had the good fortune to help stabilize the building and paint the exterior of Nina Simone's home. So leaving you with this, the past and the present merge to meet us here. Hopefully this conversation and the resulting discussions afterwards that we can put together a national agenda that confronts anti blackness, and the discrimination against communities of color, and that we can build a more impactful contemporary preservation movement. Thank you. Thank you Brent. Now we're eight are you ready. Yeah, I am. Basically, I'm not going to only talk about my work I'm going to talk a little bit about the ethos behind my work. And then we'll have a conversation about it all together. All right. So I am a mixed media artist that makes work to wake us up and face to face our time. I am interested in how to recognize the imaginary of whiteness and the invisibility of intersectional oppression and the visibility of constructs of power and race and the material realities of class. And through my work. I'm interested in rewriting canonical accounts of history through collaborative works, digital media and immersive installations. This image here is an example of a piece that was done in 2016 after the death of Freddie Gray and Baltimore Maryland and it was a temporary monument for people that are victims and survivors of various acts of state violence. But in this talk, we're going to, I just want to go a little bit about go through how monuments create our contemporary landscape. And I also want to talk a little bit about how artists are an important element in this research and in this conversation. And for me my primary resources are basically what we see in online what's in the library archive, what type of conversations I have with people in the world right so I'm a teacher so I'm very much thinking about pedagogy all the time with my practice. When you do a Google image search, these are the images that come up when you look up public space. When you do a Google image search.  Stone bronze plaster marble cement steel monuments or places and spaces that carry significant weight to the social architecture of a place. They are oftentimes large and foreboding overlooking the spectator with eyes of reverence, and the spectator is overcome completely surrounded and encapsulated by the form. That is the monument. And that is only if people stop to look. But what is the definition of this word. According to Merriam Webster, it is obsolete. It is a burial vault. It is a written legal document or record. It is a treaties. It is a lasting evidence. It is a reminder or something or someone notable or great. It is a distinguished person. It is a memorial stone or building erected in remembrance of a person or event. It is archaic. It is an effigy. It is a position a marker. But as we can see from the shifting nature of this word monument, the monument as an object. It basically changes over time, right? And it changes according to the social and economic and political perspectives and circumstances of the time. Some monuments have been stolen or acquired through questionable means and other monuments maintain their reference. Well, in the public sphere, despite the fact that they are subjects of acrimonious debate. So, you know, this subject of the shifting understanding of monuments is a global conversation that we've seen specifically, you know, in the wake of all of the protests that happened in June, July. This movement, this Black Lives Matter movement is a global movement, right? And I wanted to point that out because I think it's important to think about what does it mean to create public space that is anti-colonial. But to bring it back to the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are more than 1,700 symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces and 113 Confederate symbols have been removed. Since the Charleston massacre in 2015, including 49 monuments, four flags and name changes for 36 schools, seven parks, three buildings, and nine roads. Most Confederate monuments were built in the 20th century. And I know that we are in a virtual room filled with scholars and people that are interested in the past. So I'm sure that you're aware of the different, the timeframe that most of these monuments were built. But because of this, I just wanted to highlight that some people also believe that the removal of these symbols is a tragedy, as they are not symbols of white supremacy and power, but symbols of the history of the United States, right? But what is it that makes certain people think that this last cause and narrative associated with Stonewall Jackson and Drew Johnson and Robert E. Lee to be true? Because it has been documented that these historical figures themselves rejected the need to hold on to division. One of the most unfortunate and widely accepted ideas about historical thinking is that history is written by the victors. This talking point asserts that the truth of the past is not shaped by reason interpretive historical scholarship or a factual understanding of the past, but by the might of political and cultural leaders on the winning side of history. The winners have the power to take to shape historical narratives through school textbooks, public iconography, movies and a range of other mediums. Confederate monuments were resurrected years after the Civil War. I just want to highlight that for everyone in the room. And Confederate monuments were so, and if this history is in the victor's perspective, then the production and creation of the narrative of the last cause of slavery makes no logical sense because the Confederate powers lost. But what were and are the social conditions that make these social norms so incredibly stuck? Why do some people feel so inclined to hold on to the idea of Confederate memories and Confederate legacies in public space? So we see this quote by Robert E. Lee. He wanted to have nothing to do with Confederate flag after his death. And neither did Jefferson Davis. So what are the social conditions that make the Confederate daughters do so much towards fundraising to produce these sculptures and develop the framework for stories about Confederate, this Confederate public memory. So with this, I'm going to talk, just go a little bit through some philosophical theories about truth, right, and what the aesthetics of truth are. So, air had this had some very interesting perspectives about truth so he was basically like, you can't, the only thing that's true is, is math. That's the only thing that you can argue is math and science. But then like right before he died, he was like, this doesn't make sense. This is the dumbest book I ever wrote. I don't know why I wrote this. So I'm going to move on to the next book. So then Foucault was all about talking about power and power as it relates to truth. And so he says that power is everywhere and comes from everywhere. So in this sense, power is neither an agency nor structure, and truth is a thing of this world. It is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint and induces regular effects of power. So these general politics are so it's like their regimes of truth, and they're the result of scientists, scientific discourses institutions. They're reinforced and redefined constantly through the education system again through media. Through the flux of political politics and economic ideologies. And in the case of historical truth for instance this becomes really important to consider, because for instance in the state of Texas, K through 12 social studies excluded recognizing the transatlantic slave trade and instead called this is an elementary school textbooks in 2015. They're they called people that were enslaved indentured servants right. So this. So I say that to say it's important to think about the public space but it's also important to think about the pedagogy, right. So what do we, how do we think about cultural memory and a holistic way. But I have, I have two more minutes, I know I'm going a little bit over. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about Stuart Hall, and what he said, he's another really amazing philosopher that talks about truth and historical truth. And he says, Stuart Hall, I'm sorry, race is a floating signifier. Okay, so, and he says this and I'm going to put this in quotes what do I mean by floating signifier well to put it crudely races one of those major concepts, which is to recognize the great class, classificatory systems of difference, which operate in the human society, and to say that race is a discursive category recognizes that all attempts to ground this concept scientifically to locate differences between the races on what one might call scientific biological or generic genetic grounds have been largely shown to be attainable. According to historical objects, these Confederate monuments truly are signifiers, they're signifiers, and the most literal sense of the word. They're signifiers of white supremacy and tragic moments of injustice and oppression. So now, how do we face our time. And if truth is constructed by people in power to maintain power, then we have to be careful and vigilant. Because as Kevin young, wrote in his book, bunk the rise of hoaxes plagiarist phonies and fake news. There's oftentimes a conflation between feeling as fact. Feeling over fact. And when it comes to our understanding of the truth in the 21st century century we really need to consider what is fact and what is a feeling. So, again, I just went over all of that to just talk about the ethos behind my work. I really see myself as a part of a movement, a contemporary movement of artists and activists, and we're creating counter narratives. Reconsidering colonial this colonial past and developing new aesthetics of the form of our understanding of history and public space and public memory. And what I mean is about obfuscating how do we obfuscate hegemony through reconsidering materials. And what does it mean and reconsidering like the, the pedagogy or the conversations that are around the objects of the stories of the past. So how do we think about moving past this white male centered account of history throughout public space in the United States. I see my work on landmark project calm, and then my Instagram Instagram is here and then this is my personal website. So, the long one of the long term goals is to create a basically like a 3D printed material that changes form every two years. There's so it creates more of a dialogue instead of a static form. But this work I started it in 2016. And it started off with a series of conversations and workshops and then that's how this future future plan came to be. But with that, I'll stop sharing and we'll have this conversation. Thank you all so much for sharing, you know, your work and your introductory thoughts with us that was great. I'm sort of branching off of some of the things that Ada just mentioned we got a question submitted to us that says, and I think it sort of segues nicely and it asks, what are your thoughts on the phrase, like, we're moving these monuments erases history. I don't, I don't think it erases history so I, so I, and if you looked in some of the images that I showed right like there's there's other examples of monuments that have been removed in other contexts right so in Germany, right, one Hitler was in power there are all of these these fascist monuments that were installed throughout the country. And in Russia as well there are a lot of monuments for authoritarian figures. But those monuments were removed and placed in a museum, or they were placed in a grave site right so it's like the monuments are removed and put somewhere where more context can be given. And the story of how they came to be right but also most of those monuments weren't really built at the time that you know what I mean most of those by mine is rebuilt at the height of Jim Crow, as a way to maintain white supremacist ideology right so their objects aren't objects aren't really related to history objects are related to the construction of whiteness. But I'll let somebody else talk about that. I would argue that monuments are not history and this is why we people seem to be very confused in the public is they somehow think that a monument is history and it is not. It's a sequence of events it's something that hopefully we retrieved through a very complicated archive that shows us multiple voices. But I think for me, oftentimes the monuments that we're talking about the Ada was referencing in her talk. They really are about power and they're about the state right about state authority oftentimes they're about power they're about the Victor and that's a very that just happens to be the person who somehow ended up on top, and wanting to tell their story through the public through the public space. So I have and I also think that monuments may I was really interested Ada and I'll go let Brent talk about it I was really interested you use this word pedagogy, because I do think monuments are a form of pedagogy. And that's a very interesting idea that they have the capacity to tell us something about the past or to tell us something about an event or an individual, but they have this incredible power to convey as you point out white supremacy right to convey notions of racism to convey, you know, profound disregard for women, even right within a public space so. And I think you know this notion of their monuments being tied to the nation and to the state are really important for us not to lose that to lose mind of that. I would say as a preservation practitioner I've asked myself, many times over the last couple of years what should we do, and should we support the erasure and and destruction of these monuments and I think I'm presently. I've landed on this idea almost of a cemetery but not in a cemetery in sense but removing these monuments from public space, because they are communicating and equitable and an accurate civic identity. And partly what I want our nation to do is begin to ask ourselves, what monuments new monuments deserve the prominence of those civic spaces, and how can we fill gaps, and our traditional American narrative how can we tell stories related to to black women and their contributions in American history and and continue that work of reconstructing our national identity identity. And I'm hopeful that we can create a national plan where African Americans are leading with many others but are leading the discussion about the future of these monuments and I envision this landscape of justice, where they relocated where artists would reimagine these monuments the way that activists are currently doing in Richmond. Right now, that reimagining of cultural heritage and the reclamation of a cultural landscape. So seeing this landscape of justice where they are positioned with their back to our nation that we never invest in their maintenance and future preservation. And if they then become organic moments that are decaying over time. That allows us to then measure our social progress. Because I think the work of becoming equitable and inclusive and confronting centuries of racism in the form of art and monuments that lie needs to stand to ensure that we never forget. And if, as you described, Ada, having the right kind of information that is accurate and thoughtful that stimulates a conversation then maybe this landscape is a space of reconciliation. Thank you, you all address like about 12 of our questions. But I'm going to go in order. Is there any different approaches for removal or preservation for different historical figures as, you know, mainstream populations are a bit behind social activism and misinformation about the statuary or the people who are represented in the statuary is is all kind of very all over the place so like how would you approach someone like Jeff the removal Jefferson Davis versus someone like George Washington. I think this is an excellent question right or like the removal of Christopher Columbus, even right. I think that providing context is important. So for instance, when I want to think about providing context or even like a counter narrative or like a, because this is the thing right like our architecture in general like when you walk through public space, like most architectural forms are very there's it's reinforcing these power structures right like it's there. Most architectures are male. Most architects are white right so it's like it's reinforcing that already off top, but then I think thinking through what it looked like to recalibrate around a non white male centered public space is important. And that look I mean the Brent the, the illustration that I saw that that site enrichment is beautiful because it's really thinking about like the natural ways that a lot of things don't really do a good job with. And so I'm also in terms of like, I also like to think about monuments that are that do a pretty good job like Maya lens.  Right and it actually is a more of a democratically designed form right where we have all of the names of the people who died during Vietnam war on that on that slab right. You know when it was being installed, there was all of this debate and all of this controversy around around it because it wasn't a person on a horse or it wasn't like this bronze figure that people tend to gravitate to when we think about monuments. But I say that to say the counter response to that was, I think that there was another there were, there's someone that made this design of like five soldiers in a battlefield, like right next to it. So I think that thinking about like what would the counter narrative be to George Washington. Right like what would that look like what would that conversation be. I think that's important. And I would actually argue that part of that message happens and I think Brent talked about this briefly but it happens at these, particularly if we're talking about presidents. What happens at their historic homes. And so I think the work that can that's happening at Mount Vernon and I still think they have more work to do there but I think they've done some good interpretation of their slave past there. What actually they've done at Montpelier I've written about this is kind of astounding to make alliances with the communities that are our descendants who were enslaved on that property is pretty phenomenal to go there and experience. I'm just talking about what that slave past means to them in the context of Montpelier and James Madison's house. And I can tell you that's not happening everywhere I want to James Madison's house last summer and it's a disaster like they the omission and willingness to ignore slavery is profound at some of these sites. And so that becomes very important. I'm of a part I'm of the mind that I think every Confederate monument needs to be taken down yesterday, and I've been saying this for about a decade. And I'm amazed that we're finally having the conversation but I have really been arguing for the removal for a very long time. And I don't think that a lot of resources should be spent on their preservation and this is a really key issue for me when I encounter monuments right now around African American history that are falling apart within five years of being built I would like resources directed around Confederate monuments. These Confederate monuments, Ada I've actually thought like send them open a huge one of these Russian style parks in Texas, there's lots of lands to come out there people want to go visit go visit, and be done with it. Like literally be done with this conversation around Confederate monuments because we are actually spending an enormous amount of human capital, talking about this problem, when we know what the solution is in my mind, like this is a complicated problem.  Like this is what since when do the vanquish get to claim public space and re narrate the lot the story of the war into the lost cause so I think the removal is really profound I can see where that can make conservators very nervous. And maybe someone gets to go work for that park and conserve those statues but I think they need to be out of view I think we need to move forward and thinking about what space should look like and what memorialization and monument building can look like. I've been arguing a little bit for a pause. Because it feels like we're rushing super super fast to populate our space, and I'm like well maybe we should actually pause and figure out what that what the memorial or monumental landscape is going to look like, or do we even want to go with monuments. You know, because I'm really interested in historic houses and historic sites and as as putting a lot of preservation effort there so yeah. I just want to second what Renee said, and I think that we are spending a lot of intellectual and social capital, and that sometimes the Confederate monuments conversation is a distraction from from where our nation needs to direct its significant advancement. And that is in the preservation of American cultural assets, the places where real history happened, the places that speaks to black activism and free freedom places that literally has moved our social consciousness as a nation forward. And, and what I'm passionate about is elevating the importance of these places and ensuring that they have the resources to be vibrant and open to the public and the right kind of operational and sustainability structures in place. So that they can serve our nation to be able to confront again using this this word the miss education the undervaluing of black contributions. And I think if these places stand across the American landscape. And that all American children and citizens begin to see themselves in this history. That's the power that we see collectively as a nation. And I think the direction this conversation has gone. I'm going to navigate front to one of the questions from our audience because I do think it curtailed nicely. So, they submitted this anonymously but it says, when we talk about removing Confederate and racist statues to museums or other sites where they can be displayed in context. We don't see any issue with the cost of maintaining these sites, even if the sculptures are left to decay as Brent likes just described there's still cost to making the sites safe accessible staffing rent property tax etc. Could those resources be spent preserving other historical sites instead. Is there a way to make sure no further resources are put to the statues. And the person is correct there would need to be some resources for security. There would need to be thoughtful interpretation and accurate information to tell the truth about the meaning of these places. But I also think that there could be a lot of just goodwill and service directed to both the management and the reimagining of this and and I just go back to what I currently see enrichment. I mean we all have seen that lone statue, literally cloaked in graffiti and paint, almost seem as if the form is changing there it's something changing and the new sense of community that has been created. We all have a a food vegetable garden on that landscape, a makeshift basketball court to see artists performing a marching band from an HPC you. This has just blown my mind for what this kind of landscape of justice could look like, just on a bigger scale. And I think someone like the equal justice initiative, given what they created in Montgomery would be an excellent partner and and manager of something like this. I think that the design group is a really interesting group of you know folks who designed the memorial and Montgomery. And I think they're visionary, like how they really resolved to have a memorial to a really heinous moment and how powerful. This is the only memorial I've ever been to where I've solved, and I think that is really effective that we have to work really hard at that monument right to process that history of extra legal violence of lynching in the United States and what does that mean for us right now what are the ties to mass incarceration, for example that they want you to draw in that space. Yeah, those are, you know, this idea, you know there's so a student of mine's working I'm teaching a class of monuments so a student of mine's down in Florida and Jacksonville and someone's bought two of these Confederate monuments to put on their fish camp. And a fish camp is a very particular Florida phenomena from what I can gather having spent a lot of time down there, where people really go out to like the Everglades to go fishing at these camps that are very basic so they're, they're they're not just statues out to these odd locations right, which points to, you know what happens when all of that dissolves into the swamp or you know like the very real issue of climate change in relationship to these as to some of these monuments as well. Yeah, also I was going to say in terms of thinking through the resources the reason why I started this project on monuments was literally because I saw the contrast between how the neighborhood that my grandmother lived in was being preserved versus the Confederate monuments of Russia next door right so I started this project when I was in Mississippi. I was in Jackson, four years, five years ago. And their roads and Jackson that haven't been paved but that Confederate statue downtown is pristine. Right, so that I mean when so they could redirect those if they want to continue to preserving those monuments redirect those resources outside of the public space. I agree with you completely and and the way that we have been advocating for preservation is equity is over the last four years. I collaborated with Congresswoman Terry Sewell of Alabama and Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina resurrected the HPCU preservation fund created the new civil rights grant program. And I feel like the people in total are directing almost $100 million in the preservation of these spaces, and to begin to diversify our national inventory of historic places. And I feel like that is just the beginning because the scale of public investment to erect, maintain this, this form of white terrorism literally in public spaces. To quantify the economic impact of this to make even stronger arguments for federal investment to ensure that the preservation of black history happens. I think that would be power. And I totally agree with with you we've assigned this article about the cost of the Confederacy that was in the Smithsonian magazine and I've dropped it into the chat, because there are real dollars that are be funded through state budgets to maintain these sites. So why not just right now redirect that money like it seems to me there's a lot of resources for literally decades that have gone into the preservation of these memorials. And we need to stop to stop this and to really rethink how we are not only funding hate right through the support of Confederate monuments like this is profound like that your state dollars, whether you realize it or not are going to Confederate monuments. But also what kind of other stories that we want to tell and I think certainly as you've printed out Brent and Ada it's a story about kind of the preservation of African American history but there's other histories to be told in the United States to and I also have been thinking a lot of a lot about the battle of the little bighorn for and the monuments there but also what does it need to talk about indigenous histories and relationship to this and how are we going to preserve indigenous histories and let's say even the histories of the Japanese internment how we're going to really we're starting that process but how do we document and do this kind of work. Thank you. In regards to the preservation as equity, as many of our ethical standards of our professions. It seems contradictory removal of statues so how does one navigate their profession of removal. And even in some cases preservation of the artist intervention or vandalism and how do you navigate profession with with equity preservation is removal. Yeah, so the the culture at the National Trust Historic Preservation shifted over the last couple of years. I believe deeply that the action fund is really shifting preservation practice and the profession, and that equity and activism as the heartbeat of preservation today and into the future. So, in 2017, our Confederate monument statement was, we should not erase history, but at the same time we don't have to revere this history. And here, our Confederate monument statement said that we support the relocation and removal of Confederate statues with the right contextualization and interpretation if they are to be removed in another and place in another public space. I think that is progressive in many ways for a traditional traditional preservation organization like the National Trust. And that is our form of equity, because in essence we are advocating that there are overlooked histories that to deserve to be in these prominent public spaces. And so we're trying to create space. And I think the, the most important thing is creating space for African Americans to have a seat at the table to make these kinds of public policy decisions. And that our nation needs to understand that Black people have a claim to this history as much as the descendants of the lost cause. And what I mean by that is, our Southern history is Black history. And this is a Southern history. So I'm empathetic to the unlearning that has to happen for the descendants. And I'm also wanting to ensure that Black voices and Black people that we claim our full power and that we define the future of Confederate monuments. That's it. People that were so great, Brent. I mean, but also I think Renee what you mentioned too is important, right, because the history of the United States isn't just black and white, right. If there's, there's so many other, there, you know, like colonialism happen. There's genocide right genocide of indigenous peoples across this land, how do we reconcile with that where where the, where is the where is that in the K through 12 pedagogy but then also where is that. In the, in the public landscape right, like I guess we could think about that. In terms of reservations but even that, I mean but that in itself is an indication right of the inequities that we that are still present, right. But I mean, I think also I really want to reiterate the fact like Robert E. Lee, all of you know, Jefferson Davis they weren't even interested in maintaining this Confederate flag like they weren't even trying to hold that up anymore when they were when they were alive so why, you know, it's, but I also think it's interesting to think about the Confederate flag as it relates to the United States flag because some people feel the same way about both of them as it relates to the genocide of indigenous people right. I mean I just want to complicate, I just want to complicate everything because that's just what I like to do sometimes but. I don't know if there's yeah. I'm going to stop here. And I can if I could and I'm not a preservation person what's interesting to me for example so the Valentine House in Richmond. And Valentine made the Jefferson Davis they're taking it with all the graffiti, and they want it with the graffiti they don't want to clean it so someone asked about this like are we going to take all the paint off I think I saw that one of the I don't see it as a valid intervention that they want to preserve, and to have in the house when you come, because it will add a dimension to the story of this artist who created that object. So that's what they're seeking at the Valentine House, in particular around, you know, these painted bases and I think this idea of the plinth is done like right. And that's one thing we've learned that the plant that that base of the statue but that it can be all sorts of can have projections on it can have performance on it right that you can do other objects on it can become the springboard quite frankly to do all sorts of other kinds of storytelling, which is pretty exciting. Thank you for all of that I love the acknowledgement of like, making it complicated like intersectionality is a thing. And our next question sort of speaks to community engagement because while we are, you know, largely an audience of conservators, we with these monuments I think a lot of us hope to take more of a community forward approach to the conservation of them if we ever are tasked with such a thing. And so the question, like, can you just speak to your experience with community engagement and contested monuments. I'll start off. And, and just to say that two examples. So I had the good fortune to lead the creation of the Birmingham Civil Rights National monument. And at the centerpiece is the AG Gaston will tell constructed 1954 Green Book site built by AG Gaston most successful black entrepreneur during the period of segregation. The first black motel in the entire state. In the spring of 1963, the entire American civil rights movement would descend. The Birmingham campaign known as Project C math, youth demonstration movement that was a catalyst for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. When we got involved this building had been vacant for 20 years, and a very senior member. The girl side looked at this motel when we were advocating with the community that it should be represented within our national parks. And they said all we see is deferred maintenance. So it was not about the history. It wasn't about the, the advocacy of the grassroots community, or even an African American mayor at that time. The way that we were able to achieve success was able to get the city to direct its full resources. I wrote and we developed a shared use plan for moving this project forward and and warp speed time in a year and a half, but the real power came from the African American property owners like the Board of Trustees and Reverend Pastor price at 16th Street Baptist Church representatives from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, it was bringing together the black cultural institutions, having a shared vision, talking points. And then we had public community engagement events, one called the, the March for Birmingham. We had the artist let us see perform free concert, and it brought the community together to remind them of the significance of American history that they steward, literally across this collection of historic sites across three or four blocks. I would say that the most important thing is to identify the black cultural institutions. Bring them together, understand what their vision is for their community. And then we provide our specialized expertise and helping them to move that forward. What I'm often seen is sometimes the vision is not as ambitious as it should be, given the significance of our story and the places we preserve. So I say, how many more national parks can we create to tell the story of the black experience. How many more sites in Richmond. At the bottom. That's sitting there, literally invisible but that collective memory is still alive within the black community and they are advocating. So in that as example we use community engagement with artists and graphic designers and architects that would take their vision, put it into a visual framework on that slide. And then we went through a process of helping them to strengthen their arguments. So now they say that this project links together preservation, economic development and memorialization. And so part of that economic development argument was funding an equitable development plan, so that they could quantify the economic impact of restoring and reviving this cultural landscape. Yeah, I'm an artist so I'm always constantly trying to have a conversation with an audience. So to date, I've been hosting these workshops since 2018 and today to have about 500 different responses. And it's not like the concept is really about like what is a monument right or what what will a monument in the future look like. I think we've even looked at a monument right so it's a series of questions that I have been asking various groups of people. I did it in Dallas I did in Baltimore, and I did it in DC. And overall, like the general responses have been that people are interested in seeing more engaging monuments or more monuments where there's space for interaction with the stories of the past. And I think one, I mean, one could argue that, you know, like Renee's project with the Instagram right like the archive, right there because a monument is essentially an archive right like we have the ability to create our archives. Every day on social media right so I think that a lot of. Yeah, most of the people that I've had conversations with are like how do we use technology to connect us more and use technology to create more robust stories. You know what I mean the 1619 project interactive website is it was a wonderful archive. And also a monument right. So, I think. Long story short is yes I think it's important to have community dialogue around the stories of these objects that are supposed to be signifiers of the past, but also. It's important to reimagine and dream about what new formats could look like. So you know, the project that contemporary monuments to slave past I'm moving very directly into community involvement because I want partly to see what is it that people value and think is a monument. What kind of photographs are they going to send us what kind of things are they going to identify but also in some ways to get people very much connected to the more their own memorial landscapes and monumental landscapes and to think about space in new ways so. As far as the project that kind of gets at a little bit at this really complicated question about community engagement.  Right, and trying to process that in some way, and being really frustrated with Instagram but also thinking like can I'm always interested in technology can I use this digital rounded to actually literally do an intervention and tell a different kind of story and in some ways of working against all the happy loaves of sourdough bread that seem to have cropped up during COVID like in a really strange way right, but also that memorial has very much to do with my advisor diet dying of COVID during this time period of witnessing the death of George Floyd and then actually having the very first people respond were my graduate students said, Oh wow you've given us a space to mourn and I was like oh I just put this up as a marker to the other blog I wrote about that and then I started to post them every day and have now done for 130 days, and I have a group of 400 people who follow every day so it's clearly doing some kind of work for someone I don't know exactly what that work is because I haven't interviewed people yet but. And that's okay with me that people also need space with monuments to sort out what they think about it and how they want how they want to interact and what they think the potential of. Let's say the digital or Instagram as an activist platform, let's say to tell different kinds of stories. I don't know about the digital memorial and Instagram but I, I've been really impressed actually with with this group of contemporary artists like you Ada Becky Davis is one and who is working in Rhode Island to get communities to enter spaces that traditionally they were excluded So in Rhode Island Becky Davis has this did this project with the Burnside monument you know equestrian monument a very traditional but she. Actually set up that you could come and get your hair braided there and get your hair that black woman could show up in that space and, and it was astounding like she showed his video I could not believe like you kind of forgot George Burnside on that horse. He lived in a new way and had a different kind of function and could tell different stories about the black community that surrounded the monument. So there's all sorts of ways that artists can, I think, transform even the monuments that stay and invite people into those spaces who have always felt that they don't belong in those spaces. And I just want to build on that. So, a lot of my thinking as a blade is related to the ephemeral and, and how do we memorialize the artwork related to the killing of George Floyd, or the murals related to black lives matter and, or Breonna Taylor that we see in Louisville Kentucky and, and is that the role of contemporary preservationist to advocate for the preservation of our recent past, not just, you know the buildings and artifacts that are 50 years or older. And I say we should. And the exciting news is the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis is documenting every George Floyd mural ephemeral kind of art protest art they have both a protest art database and one to George Floyd and they've already collected something like 1500 objects. And they'll make their database and I know, Heather, a Sherry runs that project so there's someone who's actually doing that preservation work right now, like trying to capture the ephemeral so that we know that there was a response so it doesn't disappear that we can document it in history that people were angry, and they had they wanted to show their grief in public space in these ways so I'll put a link into that so that people can see it into the chat. Yeah, that's perfect. So how does a conservator or anyone in the public support artists and cultural barriers to create these spaces to reclaim these spaces what are the avenues through through social activism or through contacting government, how do we, how do we support. I would say that you can provide support to the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. It is a movement that has never happened before. In many ways it's, it's something that was unimaginable, five to 10 years ago. So joining this movement and helping us be successful because it creates the blueprint for the other social and ethnic communities that will follow in the footsteps. And it's my goal and hope that eventually will be investing billions of dollars to tell the full diverse story of American history. You know, whether it's students or conservators getting together and having a conversation, building out some guiding principles, putting together a, an agenda that you map out almost a basic strategic plan that has equity driven outcomes, and that you begin to move forward in advancing that work as activism. And that's something that anyone can do on a zoom meeting or phone call and, and it can be informal but it can have potential big impacts. Are you all okay with going a little bit over time since we started late. Unfortunately, I have to, I have to leave. I have another meeting. Sorry, I got back. It's back to back today. Yeah. Are you okay for one more question or. Nila, would you like to do a final question or Sure, sure, sure. Let's see. Well, I know we've touched on this a little bit but I think it would be a great note to end on so what is the future of monuments and public space. The next hour please. We have a entire semester talking about that. Great. solid four years. For five years.  The future is us continuing to do the work that we've been doing. And I think the future is promising because, you know, again, this is a global conversation that I think I think that we need to acknowledge. So yeah, I think the future of monuments is a lot more nuanced than they have been in the past I mean we're in the 21st century so there's a lot of there's a lot of potential to move past this this person on a horse on a horse line situation, and I'm looking forward to that. I would say that the future is about truth. And if we can create an equitable and truthful American landscape that uplifts the stories of diverse communities, and that we begin to elevate both the cultural and financial value of these assets.  And so hopefully we can shift public perceptions to be able to value these kinds of histories and spaces. And I so appreciate you saying that because I do think we need more expansive notions of what we consider monuments. And I'm going to underscore both what Ada and Brent said but I think really as we move forward is this idea of poly vocality that that we are a group that has a society that has many kinds of voices that need to be heard and need to be part of the conversation and that we think really hard about what that means. And also, you know, I want to just point out as the art as a you know the art historian that, you know monuments are not permanent and this is something I am intrigued that we insist that they are not permanent. And I think you know historically, we go all the way back to the Egyptians times, let's say, way back. We have removed monuments we have destroyed monuments we have vandalized monuments we've been doing this is a long time as human beings this is not unusual behavior. And part for me is that people actually get educated on the history of that to understand that our engagement with monuments is very long human beings have been putting up monuments and memorials it feels like since we could figure out how to do it. And that most importantly that we get the this, at least in the current moment, I would actually like to see more engagement with communities around what they want. This is really important to me that we move towards, I guess, inclusiveness and this decision making about what gets preserved and who gets to preserve it and how and the stories that get preserved but that communities are pretty smart about this and I think if we can engage them in the ways that Brent was pointing towards some funding for that. We can have really vibrant conversations in the future about monuments and monumental space. You all want one more question. Unfortunately, I have to. We can come back again. Yeah, that would be great. Thank you all so much nylon I have a last slide to share with the participants, if you all have to go but thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing your wonderful work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We didn't want to just in this conversation with we're just moving on to the next, the next presentation we wanted to give some, maybe some stop points to take back to your forums or take back to your institutions or your labs and talk about what we can do is conservators to actually fulfill this work of inclusion and representation in monuments and how we move forward through our, our work as conservators in general. So we nylon I came up with these action items. The first was for us as conservators to create guidelines for community engagement, how to identify stakeholders and whether it's an area where you need, or have a contested monument or would like to create something more inclusive. How to create and sustain relationships and transparency with community and compensation and proper acknowledgement of community collaborators. The second one is historical grounding and communities where you work and study, identifying racial injustice and discrimination in your surrounding communities, identifying racist policies both the history and current that affect your communities and identify community organizations that are already working within the social justice context for police advocacy and restorative practices. So what you're going to be banging off of that is really just challenging your own biases, you know, a lot of this work comes from you and how you would approach a situation, especially when working with sort of, if you are sort of part of the dominant narrative and the dominant culture and you want to try to reach out to historically marginalized groups and communities it's really important that you sort of look at yourself and try and you know, disassemble some of those biases that have just been built into the idea of the system of white supremacy that we live in. And possibly a racial equity statement by AIC and updating the AIC code of ethics to reflect diversity, equity, inclusion and access schools for our practices. I saw a couple of people asking sort of about like is it ethical, like how do we sort of stay in line with our ethics and interact with these monuments and I think that really is something that should be updated and included in the sort of AIC code of ethics so we have a very clear answer to that question. Yes. So, thank you. Again, everyone. Sarah will take it from here.  I just wanted to let you know that there are two more free webinars in the social justice and conservation series. The next webinar will be on decolonizing collections and prioritizing community partnerships. We're working to schedule that webinar for December and we'll share the dates once we have them. The other webinar will be on emotion and bias in conservation work, which most likely will be in February. And then we'll also be doing a workshop on creating 21st century conservation ethics framework, which will take place in the spring and that will be an interactive session that will allow participants to work in small groups with a team to discuss the topics from these webinars and to work to reimagine what a more equitable conservation field could look like. We hope that you can join us for these programs and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You can keep an eye out for an email from us with the link to the recording of this program. And we would ask that you share that link with anyone who wasn't able to make it here today. Thank you.