An important new sculptural installation commissioned by the Trust for the National Mall opened in Washington, D.C. last week to the acclaim of critics and visitors who helped inaugurate the seminal first edition of the Beyond Granite series from Philadelphia-based collective Monument Lab.

Images of the six sculptures designed by artists Wendy Red Star, Derrick Adams, vanessa german, Ashon T. Crawley, Tiffany Chung, and Paul Ramírez Jonas were shared, showcasing the beginnings of what should be one of the year’s most significant public art exhibitions. Written in the Washington Post over the weekend, Philip Kennicott commended the new installation as being both well produced and thoughtful, adding that “this is the first time a serious art exhibition has been staged there” before remarking on the role of the Mall as a protest space.

Other reviews highlighted the unique ability of each sculpture to contextualize and communicate the difficult and complex realities important to the experiences of their subject matter, the many marginalized communities of America whose stories remain untold. 

‘What I found compelling about the whole project is the way a work might succeed on one dimension (maybe by undermining traditional, Guy-on-a-Horse ideas about monumentality) in the very act of failing on another (say, to achieve the visceral power of an old-fashioned monument),” Blake Gopnik wrote for the New York Times. “These impossible tensions between success and failure may simply be unavoidable in anything called a “public monument.”

Monument Lab had said they wanted to accomplish a shift in thinking about the role of public design in 21st-century America. The installation will therefore serve as an influential first foray into the first mass corrective attempts at public design in the country’s history. Last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Criticism winner Salamishah Tille, who is a co-curator, says it also works as “a statement of power and presence in public” overall. 

The exhibition is open daily from 12-7 PM daily through September 18th. More information about the Beyond Granite series, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s $250 million new Monuments Project, can be found here.