Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
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
Who and what comes to mind when thinking of American architecture? In practice, academia, and culture, America's influence on the built environment has undergone moments of triumph as well as moments of reflection. In celebration of the nation's independence from British monarchy in... View full entry
As City—Michael Heizer’s vast Land Art installation in the Nevada desert—nears completion, the fate of the federally protected land surrounding it could soon be decided. Ryan Zinke, the US Interior Secretary, visited the state on Sunday, 30 July, as part of a review of 27 national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump, which could result in some of these lands being reopened to development. — theartnewspaper.com
"A number of museums banded together to call for the site’s preservation," The Art Newspaper explains the background of City's current surroundings (previously also on Archinect), "and in 2015, Obama created the Basin and Range National Monument, which covers 704,000 acres in southern Nevada’s... View full entry
On Friday, President Obama formally [declared] the Greenwich Village bar and its surrounding area the Stonewall National Monument, and creating the first National Park Service unit dedicated to the gay rights movement.
According to the White House, the monument designation will consist of 7.7 acres, protecting the tavern, Christopher Park across the street, and several other streets and sidewalks where spontaneous protests were held for equal rights in 1969.
— The New York Times
More on Archinect:Queer Space, After Pulse: Archinect Sessions #69 ft. special guests James Rojas and Susan SurfaceThe enduring significance of gay bars in American citiesObama administration to designate Stonewall as America's first LGBT memorialHow LGBT Acceptance Is Redefining Urban AmericaU.S... View full entry
Using his authority under the Antiquities Act, the president created a protected area spanning roughly 704,000 acres in central Nevada’s Basin and Range, as well as smaller ones in California’s Berryessa Snow Mountain and Texas’ Waco Mammoth. [...]
Broadly supported by environmentalists, [Basin and Range] is also home to a major earthen sculpture, “City” which the artist Michael Heizer has worked to create over nearly half a century.
— washingtonpost.com
All in all, these new monuments cover more land than the state of Rhode Island, adding significant mileage to Obama's public lands legacy. The Basin and Range (Nevada), Berryessa Snow Mountain (California) and Waco Mammoth (Texas) monuments cover lands that are either completely or mostly... View full entry
