Monday’s Monument: Gure Aitaren Etxea (Our Father’s House), Guernica, Spain
This memorial, by the Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida, was dedicated on April 27th 1988, commissioned by the Basque Government to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica by the Nazis. "Gure aitaren etxea," the title in Basque, roughly translates...
Monday’s Monument: Garden of Philosophy, Budapest, Hungary
Sculpted by Nándor Wagner between 1982 and 1997, this statue grouping was installed on Budapest’s Gellért Hill in 2001. Wagner's intention for the piece was to promote mutual understanding among the world’s religions. The group of statues features an inner circle...
Monday’s Monument: Herald of Peace, New York, New York
After World War II, the General Assembly of the United Nations decided that its headquarters would be established in New York City. In 1946 the Rockefeller family donated funds for the acquisition of a tract of land in Manhattan. Construction of the building complex...
Since May 2015, every Monday morning I have been posting a little essay about a peace or social justice monument. For more than a decade, ever since the peaceCENTER was contracted by a national peace & human rights group to develop a workshop exploring strategies for creating memorials about acts of violence and injustice that did not glorify the bloodshed, we have pondered the relationship between the landscape and civic memory.
“I would rather take care of the stomachs of the living
than the glory of the departed in the form of monuments.”
Alfred Nobel
As we showcase these monuments we hope you will join us in this exploration. For now, we’re concentrating on publicly accessible outdoor works. Some are grassroots and homespun; others, more complicated in their funding and execution. They all have a story to tell and we can learn from all of them.
Monday’s Monument: Los Angeles Opens its Heart of Compassion, Los Angeles, California
The sculpture in the Koreatown neighborhood, which was revealed in 2015, is situated between the two towers of The Vermont, a mixed-use luxury development featuring retail and residential space, and covers the four floors of the building’s parking structure. It is...
Monday’s Monument: Standing by Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Monument, Melbourne, Australia
Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were two Palawa (indigenous Tasmanian) men who were executed for the killing of two whalers. They were executed at a time when frontier wars between Koorie (Aboriginal Australians from Victoria and New South Wales) and colonist...
Monday’s Monument: Clio: Goddess of History—Genius of Peace, New Orleans, Louisiana
The focal point of the Gayarré Park on the Esplanade is this monument, which was originally displayed at the 1884 New Orleans World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition at Audubon Park. It was erected at the exposition by a terracotta company to showcase what...
Monday’s Monument: Monument In Honor of the Slaughtered Animals, Wroclaw, Poland
From the 13th Century, the historic Stare Jatki, which translates to “Old Shambles,” provided Wrocław’s population with meat. The butcher’s trade flourished for many generations in this part of the city’s Old Town. In the mid-18th Century the slaughterhouses were...
Monday’s Monument: Rymdfält av fred (Space Field of Peace), Lund, Sweden
Located in the city of Lund in southern Sweden, this piece by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida is in the main square, in front of the city hall. Completed in 1972, it is known as Rymdfält av fred in Swedish, and was commissioned by the city council to represent peace....
Monday’s Monument: Monument to Tolerance, Seville, Spain
Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida's Monument to Tolerance, is next to the Triana Bridge by the Guadalquivir River. It was completed in 1992 to coincide with the Universal Exposition of Seville, it was commissioned by The Friends of Sefarad Foundation for the Sephardic...
Monday’s Monument: Ashurbanipal Statue, San Francisco, California
The 15-foot statue depicting the Assyrian king was commissioned by the Assyrian Foundation for the Arts and presented to the City of San Francisco in 1988 as a gift from the Assyrian people. The statue stands on Fulton Street between the Main Library and Asian Art...
Monday’s Monument: Benito Juárez Monument, New York, New York
This monument depicts Benito Juárez (1806–1872), one of Mexico’s most loved political figures and the first Mexican figure to be commemorated with a New York City monument. Mexican sculptor Moises Cabrera Orozco created the piece, which portrays Juárez leaning on a...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Statue Judith, Breda, Netherlands
Although this statue in the Grote Mark in Breda is referred to as a peace statue it is actually a tribute to the liberation of the city on October 29, 1944 by the 1st Polish Armoured Division commanded by General Stanisław Maczek, who is buried in a nearby military...
Monday’s Monument: Flame of Compassion, Denver, Colorado
The “Flame of Compassion” is a aeolian wind harp which is in constant harmonic communication with the elemental heartbeat of nature. This sculpture stands as a metaphor for the constant vigilance and genuine intent held to create Harmony as the preferred outcome in...
Monday’s Monument: Jan Karski Statue, New York, New York
Jan Karski was a World War II Polish resistance fighter who risked his life to bring firsthand reports of the Holocaust to the Allies. This statue of him is on the southeast corner of Madison Avenue & 37th St., in front of the Polish Consulate. This bronze statue...
Monday’s Monument: La Rogativa, San Juan, Puerto Rico
La Rogativa is a famous bronze statue located in the Plazuela de la Rogativa on Caleta de las Monjas near La Puerta de San Juan. Derived from the verb rogar, meaning to plea or to supplicate, a rogativa is a procession making a plea to God for help. British troops,...
Monday’s Monument: Vernon Dahmer Statue, Hattiesburg, Mississippi
The bronze sculpture, created by artists Vixon Sullivan and Ben Watts, was commissioned in 2018 by the Forrest County Board of Supervisors to honor the man who was killed for trying to get blacks registered to vote. It was dedicated in a plaza outside the courthouse...
Monday’s Monument: Sülh Göyərçini Bidəsi, Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
The peace dove monument in Nasimi Culture and Leisure Park has become the symbol of the city of Sumgayit. Made of solid concrete, it was designed by the Chief Artist of Sumgayit Vagif Nazirov and architect A. Guliyev. The sculpture was installed in 1978. The...
Monday’s Monument: Messenger of Peace, Manchester, England
The Messenger of Peace sculpture was the winner of a 1986 competition to celebrate the status of Manchester as the world's first nuclear free city. This bronze statue, created by sculptor Barbara Pearson, was the winning entry and it showed a woman with doves around...
Monday’s Monument: Embodied, Los Angeles, California
Unveiled in October, 2014, this statue, created by Los Angeles artist Alison Saar, is intended to exemplify the spirit and values of justice represented in the roles of District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Department, the tenants of the recently renovated Hall...
Monday’s Monument: Unwavering Courage in the Pursuit of Freedom, Wilmington, Delaware
Dedicated in 2012, this scene embodies the perseverance and sacrifice of Harriet Tubman and those who assisted her in leading enslaved African Americans out of the South, a dangerous, clandestine operation known as the Underground Railroad. This monument includes...
Monday’s Monument: Resolution, Nicosia, Cyprus
Resolution (1995), by Cypriot sculptor Theodoulos Grigoriou, reiterates the faith of the city of Nicosia and its inhabitants to human rights as the only precondition to peace and freedom. On the round cement base, part of the text of the Universal Declaration of Human...
Monday’s Monument: Bukit Kasih, Kanonang Village, Indonesia
Bukit Kasih translates as Peace Hill or Hill of Love. It was built in 2002 as a spiritual center where religious followers from various faiths can gather, meditate and worship side by side "at the lush and misty tropical hill." The people of north Sulawesi Island...
Monday’s Monument: Mustafa Kamâl Atatürk Statue, Washington, D.C.
In Turkish, the phrase "Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh" -- "Peace at Home, Peace in the World" -- was first said by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on 20 April 1931 to the public during his tours of Anatolia (aka Asia Minor.) This stance was later integrated and implemented as the...
Monday’s Monument: Monumento del Primer Grito de la Independencia de Centro América, San Salvador, El Salvador
A year after the more famous Mexican Grito de Dolores on September 16, 1810, Central America also shouted for freedom and liberty, in El Salvador. This monument marks that occasion, on November 5, 1811. Manuel Jose Arce proclaimed in a speech in what is now Libertad...
Monday’s Monument: The Petrified, Geneva, Switzerland
Just off the United Nations Square, up a small rise, is the Musee International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge (the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum.) As you walk up the ramp to the museum entrance, you encounter a group of shrouded, life-size...
Monday’s Monument: Tolerance Monument, Hilversum, The Netherlands
This statue is on the station square in Hilversum, a city between Utrecht and Amsterdam. The statue is named "Monument for Tolerance," but it is popularly called "the hands."The monument of concrete and glass was created by Edo van Tetterode. It is of two stone hands...
Monday’s Monument: Irish Famine Memorial, Providence, Rhode Island
The Irish Famine Memorial, along the Riverway, was dedicated on November 17, 2007. A bronze statue of three Irish figures anchors one end of the site, with a walkway incorporating memorial bricks and flagstones leading to the memorial wall. There, a narrative plaque...
MONUMENT (n.)
late 13c., “a sepulchre,” from Old French monument “grave, tomb, monument,” and directly from Latin monumentum “a monument, memorial structure, statue; votive offering; tomb; memorial record,” literally “something that reminds,” from monere “to admonish, warn, advice,” from PIE *moneyo-, suffixed (causative) form of root *men- (1) “to think.” Sense of “structure or edifice to commemorate a notable person, action, or event” first attested c. 1600.
Ten Questions to Ask at a Historic Site
In his book Lies Across America, Professor James Loewen posed these ten questions to ask at a historic site.
1. When did this location become a historic site? (When was the marker or monument put up? Or the house interpreted?) How did that time differ from ours? From the time of the event or person interpreted?
2. Who sponsored it? representing which participant groups’s point of view? What was their position in the social structure when the event occurred? When the site went “up”?
3. What were the sponsor’s motives? What were their ideological needs and social purposes? What were their values?
4. What is the intended audience for the site? What values were they trying to leave for us, today? What does the site ask us to go and do or think about?
5. Did the sponsors have government support? At what level? Who was ruling the government at the time? What ideological arguments were used to get the government acquiescence?
6. Who is left out? What points of view go largely unheard? How would the story differ if a different group told it? Another political party? Race? Sex? Class? Religious group?
7. Are there problematic (insulting, degrading) words or symbols that would not be used today, or by other groups?
8. How is the site used today? Do traditional rituals continue to connect today’s public to it? Or is it ignored? Why?
9. Is the presentation accurate? What actually happened? What historical sources tell of the event, people, or period commemorated at this site?
10. How does the site fit in with others that treat the same era? Or subject? What other people lived ad events happened then but are not commemorated? Why?
Want to learn more about monuments? Check out my bookshelf.
Ready to Kill
by Carl Sandburg (Chicago Poems, 1916)
TEN minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.
Want more poems? Check out my monumental poetry section.