Archinect - News

Confederate monuments at the center of deadly Charlottesville rally have been removed

2021-07-12T12:43:00-04:00

Charlottesville said in a news release that the equestrian statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as well as a nearby one of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson will be removed Saturday. Designated public viewing areas for the removals will be established in both parks where the statues are located, the news release said.

The city had been planning to take at least the Lee statue down since 2016, which in part prompted the deadly 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally. A number of laws and local ordinances had put the removal in question before a court ruling earlier this year ultimately cleared the way.

The statues were removed on Saturday after a last-minute announcement by the city. NPR has more on the planned removals herer.

Remembering the built environment of segregated America

2020-12-07T13:22:00-05:00

Vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, still permeate much of America’s built environment.

For the NYT, photojournalist Richard Frishman shares powerful images of sites, buildings, and places throughout the United States along with their almost forgotten, sometimes preserved, stories from America's segregated past.

"All human landscapes are embedded with cultural meaning," Frishman writes. "And since we rarely consider our constructions as evidence of our priorities, beliefs and behaviors, the testimonies our landscapes offer are more honest than many of the things we intentionally present."

Trump proposes National Garden of American Heroes sculpture park

2020-07-06T17:43:00-04:00

Over the holiday weekend, President Donald Trump announced the creation of a new "National Garden of American Heroes" that will contain statues depicting "historically significant Americans" and other historical figures like Christopher Columbus.

The order comes as protest movements and activist groups, buoyed by the support of historic preservation groups, destroy or remove memorials dedicated to sordid individuals and causes located around the country, including monuments honoring the confederacy, Christopher Columbus, and other individuals who held racist views or perpetuated violence against Black and Indigenous peoples.

Previously on Archinect: "National Trust for Historic Preservation: 'Removal of Confederate monuments from public places is justified'."Photo courtesy of Wikimedia user Abdazizar

The text of the executive order announcing the sculpture park, states that statues could be dedicated to "the Founding Fathers, those who fought for the abolition of slavery or partici...

Society of Architectural Historians "supports and encourages the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces"

2020-06-19T17:53:00-04:00

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) has issued a statement in support of the removal of Confederate monuments in American public spaces following a concerted effort to rid memorial sites of these installations.

The statement comes as the National Trust for Historic Preservation and other architecture groups express their own support for the movement to remove these monuments.

SAH's full statement, which was crafted by the group's Heritage Conservation Committee is printed in full below.

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) supports and encourages the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces. In its 80-year history, SAH has never before advocated for the direct removal of any historic resource, let alone listed monuments. As architectural historians committed to preserving significant elements of the built environment and cultural landscape, we have vigorously championed the preservation of difficult aspects of our nation’s history such as Wounded Kne...

National Trust for Historic Preservation: "Removal of Confederate monuments from public places is justified"

2020-06-18T17:32:00-04:00

In the weeks since nationwide protests in support of the Black Lives Matter movement have erupted, dozens of monuments and statues celebrating the confederacy, Christopher Columbus, and other anti-Black and anti-Indigenous individuals and groups have been toppled across the country and around the world.

Today, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has issued a statement in support of these removal efforts, highlighting the fact that these monuments were originally erected "to glorify, promote, and reinforce white supremacy, overtly or implicitly."

Previously on Archinect: "AIA, NOMA, and other organizations issue statements of solidarity with Black community." Image credit and courtesy of Wikimedia user Rosa Pineda.

The statement, one of several issued by the organization since the protests got underway, argues that the appropriateness of these monuments is no longer in question and that they should be removed to allow for their proper study and understanding in contexts outs...

Artists reimagine monuments celebrating the Confederacy

2018-08-17T16:02:00-04:00

After the tragedy, [a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Va.] and another honoring Stonewall Jackson were shrouded, but only temporarily. Around the country, similar monuments have been removed. In some cases, only their pedestals remain. We asked artists to contemplate these markers of our country’s racist and violent history — the space they take up, physically and psychically — and imagine what should happen when they are gone.

Around the US many statues and monuments celebrating racism in our country's history have been removed, either partially or fully. The question currently remains on what we as a culture should do concerning the spaces these historical monuments inhabit[ed]. The New York Times asked artists to reimagine these spaces as possibilities for the future.

Reimagined monument by Studio Ijeoma and Michael Yarinsky Design. Image: Studio Ijeoma/Michael Yarinsky Design.

Studio Ijeoma and Michael Yarinsky Design proposed a spiraling structure around the remaining pedestal where a Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans once stood. The design includes staining the pedestal with colors corresponding to the years of slavery, segregation, and inequity in US history.

Reimagined monument by Studio Ijeoma and Michael Yarinsky Design. Image: Studio Ijeoma/Michael Yarinsky Design.

Located atop the spiraling stairs is a glass sky room where participants are able to stand where the Confederate general's stat...

Montgomery, Alabama plans a memorial to the 4,000+ victims of lynchings throughout the U.S.

2017-08-21T18:08:00-04:00

Slated to open in 2018, the Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama will seek to tell the truth. Six acres of land owned by the Equal Justice Initiative—the legal services nonprofit Stevenson founded in 1989—will memorialize the more than 4,000 victims of what Stevenson calls racial terror lynching in the American South between 1877 and 1950. A nearby museum will tell the history of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration as a single narrative.

Designed by MASS Design Group—which has previously worked on the Kigali Genocide Memorial—the memorial stems from a comprehensive report on lynchings released in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative. The memorial will feature six-foot columns, each representing counties where lynchings took place. For each column, a duplicate will be placed in the surrounding courtyard and eventually relocated to their respective counties as they directly confront their part in this history.

Where should Confederate monuments go when, and if, they are taken down?

2017-08-17T16:40:00-04:00

“You can argue that any sculpture is art in some way, but it’s a loose argument,” Schoonmaker said Tuesday. “I don’t know that these statues are worthy of preservation as art objects so much as historical objects – made to preserve a lost cause, a lost war. They weren’t made with great artistic intent, but with political intent. And intent matters in this case.”

With the tragic events occurring in Charlottesville, much ink has been spilled over the topic of Confederate memorials: Should we keep them? Should we take them down? Is keeping them up a celebration of slavery and is taking them down erasing an important part of our past that we must face?

With so much attention given to the particular statue of Robert E. Lee that caused the alt-right to riot in Virginia, it might be a surprise that a number of confederate monuments have been taken down in recent years with much less bloodshed. In May, another statue of the Confederate general was hoisted away in New Orleans amongst a cheering crowd of onlookers and a number of cities across the country have had plans in the works to take down monuments commemorating leaders of the Confederacy. With the events that occurred over the weekend, many of these cities are looking to expedite the process—the Mayor of Baltimore even had all Confederate statues dismantled overnight.

This begs the question ...

Statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is taken down in New Orleans

2017-05-30T12:57:00-04:00

As many onlookers cheered Friday, a crane hoisted the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the top of a monument in New Orleans. It is the fourth, and final, Civil War-era landmark the city has removed since late April. The effort to remove New Orleans' monuments has been part of a nationwide debate over Confederate symbols, which some argue represent slavery and injustice and others say represent history and heritage.

On Friday, the final Civil War-era landmark in New Orleans, a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee, was taken down. This was the fourth, and final, Civil War monument that the city has removed since late April after voting in 2015 to remove the Confederate markers. Many have argued that landmarks, such as the now dislodged statue of Robert E. Lee, glorify historical figures and events that for many rightfully represent slavery and injustice. As the New Orleans Mayor explained in a private address, the historical markers "celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for...to literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our more prominent places—in honor—is an inaccurate recitation of our full past, is an affront to our present and it is a bad prescription for out future."

The four monuments that have been taken down over the past months will be stored and eventually relocated althou...

New Orleans deliberates how to dismantle statues of U.S. Confederate figures

2015-08-18T09:36:00-04:00

The question of the monuments’ removal comes after several US states...have withdrawn the Confederate flag, acknowledging it as a symbol of racial hate...The [statues] are on public land 'which means that African American tax money is being used to maintain them', [says Carol Bebelle, co-chair of the Mayor’s committee for racial reconciliation]. 'What does it mean to be a city that pays tribute to part of its history that was about oppressing the major portion of its population?'

That new Texas Confederate Memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive

2015-06-22T14:15:00-04:00

In Orange, Texas, the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans just built a large Confederate memorial park, complete with a classical-ish monument featuring 13 columns—one for each of the states in the short-lived, and utterly defeated, Confederate States of America. [...] And this being Confederate sympathizers, they did not hesitate to build the memorial where the highway meets Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.