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The wait for artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group’s public memorial to Martin Luther King on the Boston Common finally ended over the weekend with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included the sculpture's design team and a host of local political dignitaries. They were on hand to... View full entry
New federal legislation is set to be introduced which will help protect African American burial grounds impacted by new construction. The African American Burial Grounds Preservation Act is part of a series of measures expected to be signed into law by President Biden before the end of 2022 and is... View full entry
A new documentary from local filmmaker Erik Duda exploring the process and impact of the University of Virginia’s Memorial to Enslaved Laborers has been released, providing insights into the creation of one of the most important public monuments in America since the opening of Maya Lin's Vietnam... View full entry
David Adjaye and Ron Arad’s design for a UK Holocaust Memorial has been halted by the country’s High Court following a legal challenge. As reported by UK outlet Building Design, the £100 million ($130 million) proposal was ruled to have been in breach of a one-hundred-year-old law which... View full entry
Last August, Swiss engineering firm Amann Engineering GmbH concluded that the iconic grain silos are at risk of collapsing as they slowly tilt. The Lebanese government, notably Economy Minister Amin Salam who is in charge of the silos, has echoed similar sentiments, which has angered the families of the devastating blast’s victims. — Al Jazeera
The structure was comprised of 42 individual reinforced concrete cylindrical silos and is credited with preventing the blast radius from further impacting the heavily-populated western portion of the city, which could have killed into the thousands. The remaining portion has since become a de... View full entry
Early into his second term, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a $10 million initiative, led by his wife, that would break the bronze ceiling by introducing seven new statues of historical women to New York City’s commemorative landscape of mostly men. It was to be one of Mr. de Blasio’s signature marks on the landscape.
Days from the end of his administration, with only $1 million dedicated, none of those sculptures has yet materialized.
— The New York Times
The failure mirrors de Blasio’s much-hyped but ultimately fruitless promise to remove some $1 billion from the police budget, which critics say was an insincere attempt to assuage the Black Lives Matter movement at a time when activists were taking to the streets nationwide to protest the... View full entry
Last Friday, Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced the development of the Barbados Heritage District with Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye leading its design. The cultural center will be located at Newton Plantation, located just outside the country’s capital Bridgetown. The... View full entry
On one small, white rectangle is the name of a 29-year-old engineer, on another the name of a World War II veteran, and on a third, that of a 15-year-old -- just three of more than 600,000 flags on the National Mall reflecting the devastating impact COVID-19 has had on American lives and the country. — ABC
The installation, "In America: Remember," was originally conceived by American artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg at the beginning of the second wave of the pandemic in October last year. "Taken holistically, this is a physical manifestation of empathy," the artist said at today’s... View full entry
Daniel Libeskind will have the memory of an entire lost city on his mind at Sunday’s official unveiling ceremony of the National Holocaust Memorial of Names in Amsterdam. “I grew up in Poland in Lodz, a city that had hundreds of thousands of Jews. There was nobody Jewish left. It taught... View full entry
More than offering a bold visual, the art will connect people who have grieved the deaths of loved ones in isolation, perhaps without an in-person funeral, Firstenberg said. It’s visualizing the vastness of loss. And it’s allowing people to participate — digitally or in person — whether or not they know someone who died of COVID-19. — Associated Press
A new installation will bring the cost of the Covid pandemic to one of Washington, D.C.’s most sacred public spaces this September in a heartbreaking display of 610,000 individual small white flags placed in the National Mall by local artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg. The flags are part of a... View full entry
David Adjaye’s proposed UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Westminster, London is going forward after gaining approval from the Minister of State for Housing Christopher Pincher this week. The memorial has drawn a considerable amount of backlash in the Commonwealth since being... View full entry
Ten days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed plans to build a new monument in Lower Manhattan honoring New York's essential workers who served on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state is now working out a new plan after protesters detoured construction in Battery Park City. — NBC New York
The state had already broken ground on the project late in June before backing out this week thanks to an incredible amount of public backlash against it. The governor’s plan for the monument was so fast-moving that it had initially been slated to open on Labor Day before this week’s... View full entry
On June 24th, the Fallen Journalists Memorial (FJM) Foundation announced its partnership with global engineering and infrastructure firm AECOM, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger, and the Levinson Group on a new site that pays homage to journalists worldwide... View full entry
President Biden formally signed H.R. 49 into law this weekend, officially recognizing the now-vacant site of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting as a national memorial in a historic move that clears the way for a new permanent monument in Orlando. The bill, named to honor the tragedy’s... View full entry
Through its master planning effort for Atlanta’s Freedom Park, SWA Group is participating in "Flowering Forest – A Tree Tribute to Civil Rights Leader John Lewis," a collaborative, living memorial to the late Congressman and Civil Rights leader, to be located in the park. John Lewis... View full entry
