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To coincide with the long-awaited public opening of Venice’s iconic Procuratie Vecchie, Italian artist Edoardo Tresoldi has produced an installation that helps highlight the mission and function of its newly reclaimed space. Titled ‘Monumento’ and taking as its backdrop the 16th-century... 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
Seventy years after one of the darkest chapters in Canadian LGBTQ history began, the Government of Canada has taken steps toward reconciliation and remembrance with a slate of just-announced new proposals for what will one day become the LGBTQ2+ National Monument in Ottawa. By locating it in the... View full entry
“The memorial is a circle, a continuous ring never ending, an opening for people to step inside and contemplate, to learn what slavery was about. For the community, I hope it enlightens young and old, and reminds everyone that slavery was a very evil part of our history.” — UVA Today
Members of the University of Virginia share their personal experiences and connections to the currently-under-construction Memorial to Enslaved Laborers that is taking shape on the campus. The university’s Board of Visitors has chosen an interdisciplinary team to bring the... View full entry
The Washington Monument will again welcome visitors up to its observation deck, where, from more than 500 feet in the air, visitors can see national landmarks including the U.S. Capitol, Washington National Cathedral, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial.
But first, you have to go through security.
— NPR
After undergoing a 3-year renovation, including elevator upgrades and adding a new glass-and-steel security screening center designed by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, the 555-foot-tall obelisk reopened to the public on Thursday, September 19th. View full entry
Working with an international team of researchers and artists, Tomšič and Bricelj Baraga study, map and archive fading sites and Brutalist-style structures. They’re building a database of about 120 case studies across Europe and in former Soviet states and will be releasing a book this year. — The Guardian
"Using a surveying and data-collection process known as photogrammetry and a series of high-powered computer workstations, a team led by Georgios Artopoulos will create a digital model of the monument for use with virtual reality headsets or smartphones," writes the Guardian's Nate Berg about the... View full entry
"Beyond its strictly Parisian statement, it touches the most general human image-repertoire: its simple, primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher ... [Gustave] Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a... View full entry
Officially called the “House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party”, the building fell into disrepair following the collapse of the country's socialist government in 1989, but remains a popular landmark and tourist attraction. The trip comes before an expected visit by European and Bulgarian experts at the end of 2018, who will report on the building’s structural integrity with the view of opening it officially to tourists. — The Calvert Journal
For the 2018 Venice Biennale, Estonia's pavilion, “Weak Monument”, explores the explicit representation of the monument and the implicit politics of everyday architectural forms. Curated by Laura Linsi, Roland Reemaa and Tadeáš Říha, the exhibition takes over the former Santa Maria... View full entry
Designed by Snøhetta in collaboration with Local Studio and Design Indaba, the Arch for Arch stands as a monument to the human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, affectionally known as “Arch” by fellow South Africans. Desmond Tutu Memorial Arch by... View full entry
A new set of photographs of the recently opened Canadian National Holocaust Monument have been released and help give a better understanding of the Daniel Libeskind-designed space: how it sits in its surrounding landscape created by Claude Cormier, and what atmosphere the large-scale... View full entry
Once the renovation is complete, the four-storey building will be used as a venue for art exhibitions, installations and seminars that will be open to the public, as well as a philanthropic institution to help vulnerable people including refugees...any old material removed from the building will have to be taken away in barges along Venice’s canals, while new material will have to be brought in the same way. — The Telegraph
David Chipperfield will lead the painstaking renovation of the monumental Procuratie Vecchie in Venice's St. Mark's Square. When the project is complete in 2020, the building will be accessible to the public for the first time in some 500 years. View full entry
Last week we mentioned the Canadian National Holocaust Monument celebrating its grand opening in Ottawa. The stock of available imagery has been very limited for the last years and consisted of mostly the same aerial rendering in a few variations. Now we've received new photographs that give a... View full entry
Canada today (27 September) inaugurated its first national Holocaust Monument, in Ottawa, an endeavour ten years in the making. [...] The monument’s design and construction was a collaboration between the New York-based architect Daniel Libeskind, the Montreal-based landscape architect Claude Cormier, the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky and the University of Toronto professor Doris Bergman, an expert on the Holocaust. — The Art Newspaper
"From above, the monument is the shape of a skewed Star of David," The Art Newspaper writes, "which [...] recognises the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but also other groups who were persecuted, such as homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses." View full entry
After the attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., that left 49 people dead, Governor Cuomo formed the LGBT Memorial Commission to honor the fight for equal rights and remember victims of hate, intolerance and violence. A request for designs for the new memorial went out in October. It is to be built in Hudson River Park near the waterfront piers that have played a key role in the city’s history as both a meeting place and a haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — NY Times
Designed by a Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist, Anthony Goicolea, the LGBTQ monument consists of nine boulders, some bisected with glass that acts as a prism and can emit a subtle rainbow. Meant to be communicative, usable and complimentary to the landscape, the design was inspired by sites... View full entry
