Monday’s Monument: Peace Garden, Bury St. Edmunds, England
By the 1190’s, there were about 2,500 Jews living in England, enjoying relative freedom compared to those on the continent. Although they comprised less that 0.25% of the English population, they provided 8% of the total income of the royal treasury. This financial...
Monday’s Monument: Spheres of Reflection, San Antonio, TX
There's a new statue in San Antonio's Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. Let me make it clear. MLK Park, which is adjacent to the Eastside Boys and Girls Club on MLK Blvd., is not the same place as MLK Plaza, on N. New Braunfels, just outside the gates of Ft. Sam Houston....
Monday’s Monument: Reconciliation Monument, Podgorica, Montenegro
Since the wars of the 1990s, the Balkan governments have erected hundreds of monuments honoring civilian victims and fallen soldiers from within their own ethno-national group but there has been only one small glass memorial which pays tribute to civilian casualties...
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: Ether Monument, Boston, Massachusetts
Dedicated in 1868, this forty-foot-tall monument commemorates the use of ether as an anesthetic, a pivotal moment in medical history. The first public demonstration of ether anesthesia was conducted at nearby Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846 by Boston dentist...
Monday’s Monument: Hesperus Peace Park, Durango, Colorado
The Hesperus Peace Park is in the style of a kiva on the Fort Lewis College Campus in southwestern Colorado. Fort Lewis College is known for its American Indian Native programs and culture, thus the kiva- style park both reflects the culture of the area and the arid...
Monday’s Monument: Zinkglobal: The Key to the Future, Copenhagen, Denmark
This statue made of scrap, is a riff on Rodin's "The Thinker" and sits on a bench in the shape of a key. It is located on the waterfront, near the "Little Mermaid" statue. The artist, Kim Michael, has an odd affectation of replacing the letter S with a Z. He describes...
Monday’s Monument: Památník Sametové Revoluce, Prague, Czech Republic
This small bronze plaque, the Velvet Revolution Monument, marks the spot where hundreds of nonviolently protesting college students were brutally beaten by riot police on the night of November 17, 1989, the 50th anniversary of when the Nazis stormed Prague in 1939 and...
Monday’s Monument: I Am Cyrus, Sydney, Australia
This is a replica of a bas relief discovered in Pasargade, the capital city of Persia, founded by Cyrus. It depicts Cyrus the Great (580–529 BC) in a Babylonian costume, Jewish helmet, with two wings and a short Persian beard. Cyrus was the first Achaemenian Emperor...
Monday’s Monument: Penn Treaty Park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In 1683, the land that is now the park was part of the Lenape village of Shackamaxon. Under an elm tree, William Penn famously entered into a treaty of peace with a chief of the Lenape Turtle Clan named Tamanend (later referred to by the Dutch as Tammany or Saint...
Monday’s Monument: Peace and Love, Beverly Hills, California
When Ringo Starr decided to live full time in Beverly Hills, he planned to honor his new hometown with a 1,500-pound polished steel monument of his hand making a peace sign. In 2017 the city's art commission declined. In 2019 there was a new mayor and a new arts...
Monday’s Monument: Tolpuddle Martyrs Statue, Tolpuddle, England
In 1832 six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to protest the gradual lowering of wages. They refused to work for less than 10 shillings a week, although by this time weekly wages were as low as six shillings. The...
Monday’s Monument: Free Speech Monument, Berkeley, California
In 1989, the Berkeley Art Project held a national public art competition to create a monument to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which began on the University of California Berkeley Campus in 1964. The winning design, created by Mark...
Monday’s Monument: Compassion, Moscow, Russia
Malchik was a black mongrel stray dog who, for about three years, lived at the Mendeleyevskaya station on the Moscow Metro. Popular station with rail employees and commuters, in 2001 he was stabbed to death by a young model, found at trial to be mentally ill. This...
Monday’s Monument: Owen D. Young Peace Tower, Washington, D.C.
The Universalist National Memorial Church on Dupont Circle was the flagship congregation of the Universalist Church of America from 1930 until 1961, when the denomination merged with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association....
Monday’s Monument: Little Friar Call Box Marker, Washington, D.C.
Police and fire call boxes were installed throughout the Washington, D.C. starting in the 1860s. They began to become obsolete with the introduction of the 911 emergency call system in the 1970s, and the working electronic components were all removed by 1995. The Art...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Chant, Portland, Oregon
Funded by the National Park Service and the City of Portland's Housing and Community Development department, Peace Chant, installed in 1984, it is the first known peace memorial in Oregon. The artist, Steven Gillman intended for the sculpture to "create a space where...
Monday’s Monument: Greenham Common Peace Camp Memorial
The Women’s Peace Camp on Greenham Common closed on 5 September 2000 after 19 years of continuous presence outside the Greenham Common Airbase. The women believed that the events of this important period should be remembered with a permanent commemorative and...
Monday’s Monument: Robert F. Kennedy Bust, Brooklyn, New York
A large bronze memorial bust of Robert F. Kennedy, former U.S. Senator and U.S. Attorney General in the 1960s, sits in the center of Brooklyn, New York, at Columbus Park. Kennedy, a Democrat, served as New York’s U.S. Senator from 1965 to the time he was assassinated...
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...
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...
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.