Monday’s Monument: Statue of Peace, Udine, Italy
The Statue of Peace (the seated figure on the right of the photo) was donated to the city of Udine in 1819 by Emperor Francis I to commemorate the peace Treaty of Campoformido. It is located in the Piazza Liberta. Udine is in the far northeast of Italy, not far from...
Monday’s Monument: Rush-Bagot Monument, Washington, D.C.
After the War of 1812, tensions between the U.S. and Britain were still high. One reason was militarization of the Great Lakes. U.S. Minister and future president John Quincy Adams had proposed the idea of disarmament of the Great Lakes; the British government, liking...
Monday’s Monument: Brotherhood of Man, Calgary, Canada
These ten 21-foot-tall statues were built by Spanish artist Mario Armengol for the lobby of Britain's Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. There, the figures suggested the dominance of man and stood next to what the British suggested were their gifts to the modern...
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: Peace Dove Monument, Padang City, West Sumatra, Indonesia
This monument was dedicated in April, 2016 in Muaro Lasak Park by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. The statue, perched on an eight meters-high curved base, was designed to resemble the folds of an origami paper to symbolize that peace is vulnerable. If too many...
Monday’s Monument: Peace For All, Cavan, Republic of Ireland & Enniskillen, Northern Ireland
The Senator George Mitchell Peace Bridge is a road bridge across the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It replaced an earlier structure to the east, known as the Aghalane Bridge, that was destroyed in 1972 by Irish Unionists during the Troubles....
Monday’s Monument: Monumento a la Paz y a la Concordia, Valencia, Spain
This bronze statue by José Puche was dedicated on Plaza de la Reina on November 23, 1998. On its pedestal it has an inscription that says: La Paz y la Concordia son hijas de la razon y de la mente. (Peace and Concord are daughters of reason and mind.) The nude woman...
Monday’s Monument: March on Washington Foot Soldier Memorial, Annapolis, Maryland
On August 28, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the City of Annapolis unveiled what it claims is the first memorial to the "foot soldiers" of the March. They define foot soldiers as the 250,000 ordinary citizens who marched in the demonstration...
Monday’s Monument: Spirit of Community, Newcraighall, Scotland
The colliery that was sunk in Newcraighall in 1897 promised work and wages for 100 years: the coal mine became known as "The Klondyke," It closed, in 1968, because of geological problems. Newcraighall is a southeastern suburb of Edinburgh. Installed in 1989, this...
Monday’s Monument: Free At Last, Boston, Massachusetts
Located in Marsh Plaza on the campus of Boston University, Free at Last is an abstract sculpture made of rust-covered sheets of hammered Cor-Ten steel welded together to form a flock of fifty doves in flight. Each dove represents one of the fifty states. The sculpture...
Monday’s Monument: Dalfram Dispute Memorial, Port Kembla, Australia
The Dalfram Dispute of 1938 occurred when Port Kembla workers refused to load pig iron onto the steamship Dalfram, headed for Japan, which was then at war with China. The action went against the Federal Lyons Government’s endorsed contract to provide 300,000 ton of...
Monday’s Monument: “Uncle Jack,” Baton Rouge, LA
The Good Darky (also called Uncle Jack) is a 1927 statue of an unnamed, elderly African American man. Originally erected in Natchitoches, Louisiana, it stood there until 1968, but is now on the grounds of the Louisiana State University Rural Life Museum in Baton...
Monday’s Monument: Earl Grey Column, Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
I know you are wondering: yes, he is THAT Earl Grey, of tea fame. But oh, he was so, so much more. Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, KG, PC (13 March 1764 – 17 July 1845) was a member of the Whig Party and a long-time leader of several reform movements, most famously the...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Obelisk, Jenner, California
This sculpture is inside a 60-foot circular state park, the second smallest state park in California, on the Sonoma Coast. Also known as 'Madonna of Peace' and 'The Expanding Universe,' the 93-foot sculpture dominates the cliff and is visible far down the highway and...
Monday’s Monument: Freedom of the Human Spirit, Flushing Meadows, New York
Freedom of the Human Spirit is a 28-foot-tall bronze figurative sculpture that sits just to the east of Arthur Ashe Stadium. It was created by Marshall M. Fredericks for the 1964 World's Fair. The New York City Parks Department describes it as a "Group of two upright...
Monday’s Monument: Spirit of Peace, Minneapolis, Minnesota
This series of sculptures illustrates the ancient craft of origami and folding a peace crane. Words of peace are engraved at the central base in 23 languages. The surrounding walking path includes peace stones, taken from ground zero in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, with...
Monday’s Monument: Quill and Cube, Dover, Delaware
This monument symbolizes Delaware as the first state to sign the Constitution. It is stainless steel and bronze set in a stone base. The cube has inscribed portions of the Constitution etched into a stainless steel surface. The 13-foot quill is bronze. The stainless...
Monday’s Monument: Free Speech Memorial, Brunswick, Australia
The Free Speech memorial was built to commemorate the free speech fights by workers and the unemployed in the area in the 1930s and in particular a young artist, Noel Counihan. The free speech gatherings were organized in response to a Victoria state government law...
Monday’s Monument: Monument To National Unity, Georgetown, Guyana
The Monument was dedicated on June 13th, 1995, in memory of the late Guyanese Historian and activist Dr. Walter Anthony Rodney, for "his indelible contribution to the struggle for National Unity." Rodney was assassinated in a car bombing in 1980 at the age of 38. It...
Monday’s Monument: Monument to Life and Disarmament, Bogota, Columbia
Bogotanos took the 14,000 firearms collected 2007, melted down on July 9 — International Gun Destruction Day — to create a monument to disarmament in Parque Tercer Milenio, created on the site of El Cartucho, one of the city's most violent neighborhoods. The monument...
Monday’s Monument: Flamme de la Paix, Timbuktu, Mali
The Flame of Peace or “Flamme de la Paix” is a peace monument located on the northwest part of Timbuktu facing the desert. This white construction with rifles, kalashnikovs and rocket launchers embedded in the surrounding concrete is the actual place where more than...
Monday’s Monument: Friendship Statue, Macao, China
Macao, a Portuguese colony for 450 years, was turned over to the Chinese in 1999, whence it became a special administrative region. Before the handoff, the Portuguese spiffed up the long-neglected old town, recognizing that the Chinese would be more willing to...
Monday’s Monument: Ara Pacis Mundi, Medea, Italy
The Ara Pacis in Medea was built soon after the end of the Second World War as a symbol of the sacrifice of the nation and to represent the hope of a world of peace, liberty and justice. Designed by the architect Mario Bacciocchi , it was dedicated in 1951. The...
Monday’s Monument: Bunker Mules, Blåvand Beach, Denmark
There are 7,000 concrete bunkers and fortifications on the beaches along the west coast of the Jutland Peninsula, an ugly reminder of the German occupation during World War II. In the 1990s, Denmark commissioned 24 international artists to commemorate the 50th...
Monday’s Monument: Baltic Way Memorial, Vilnius, Lithuania
In 2014, twenty-one years after the Baltic Way united Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with a human chain to protest against the Soviet occupation, a new monument commemorating the event was unveiled in Vilnius. It is a brick wall, close to Vilnius Pedagogical...
Monday’s Monument: Toleration, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The 9' 8" statue of an unnamed Quaker man was sculpted in 1883 by Herman Kirn and is a tribute to religious and political tolerance. It was gifted to Philadelphia by John Welsh, a noted citizen of the city and one of Fairmount Park’s former commissioners. It stands...
Monday’s Monument: Sülh Göyərçini (Peace Dove), Sumgayit, Azerbaijan
Peace Dove is in the Nasimi Culture and Leisure Park (named after the Azerbaijani poet and philosopher Imaddaddin Nasimi) and has become the symbol of the city. The monument was designed by Vagif Nazirov and architect A. Guliyev. Made of solid concrete, it was...
Monday’s Monument, The Yellow Line, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Commissioned by the Hobart City Council in 2013, The Yellow Line is the only permanent public artwork to acknowledge gay activism in Australia. This artwork symbolizes the line around the Tasmanian Gay Law Reform Group stall at Salamanca Market in the vicinity of...
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.