Monday’s Monument: Column of the Freedom of the Slaves, Ocaña, Columbia
On May 21, 1851, the Republic of New Granada (present-day Colombia and Panama) declared that slavery was to be abolished. The proclamation was met with a wave of support from most levels of society; however, the decision did not come into effect until January 1, 1852....
Monday’s Monument: Medicine Lodge Treaty Statue, Medicine Lodge, Kansas
In October 1867 the US government signed a treaty with five Indian tribes-- Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Kiowa-Apache and Southern Cheyenne -- to put an end to years of bloody fighting on the Great Plains. This statue, erected in 1927, commemorates that treaty. That's...
Monday’s Monument: Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa
On 16 June 1976, at the age of 12, Hector Pieterson was shot by police during the student uprising in Soweto. Although not the first to be shot, he was the first of 23 students to die. The picture taken by news photographer Sam Nzima of his body being carried by...
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: Friedensengel, Munich, Germany
The Angel of Peace is in the Munich suburb of Bogenhausen, on the banks of the Isar. It can be seen throughout the city. The foundation stone was laid on 10 May 1896; the unveiling was on 16 July 1899. It is a reminder of the twenty five peaceful years after the...
Monday’s Monument: Peace, Columbus, Ohio
On the north side of the Capitol Square stands a winged female figure clad in flowing garments holding aloft the universal symbol of peace, an olive branch. This is the statue Peace. Though erected soon after the completion of the First World War, this monument honors...
Monday’s Monument: Ara Pacis, Rome, Italy
The Ara Pacis was built between the years 13 and 9 B.C.E. to celebrate peace in the Mediterranean after the victorious battles of Emperor Augustus in Hispania (Spain & Portugal) and Gaul (present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of...
Monday’s Monument: Free Stamp, Cleveland, Ohio
The stamp, designed by Claes Oldenburg and his wife Coosje van Bruggen, was commissioned by Standard Oil of Ohio in 1982 to sit in front of the new Standard Oil of Ohio building The stamp was also supposed to sit in front of the new Standard Oil of Ohio building...
Monday’s Monument: Swords Into Plowshares, Metairie, Louisiana
This memorial is located in Metairie Cemetery, just outside New Orleans. The text on the plaque reads: This memorial is dedicated to Peace and man's search for it. ...And they shall beat their swords into plowshares....Nation shall not lift up swords against nation,...
Monday’s Monument: Monument Voor Vrijheid Verdraagzaamheid en Vrede, Oss, The Netherlands
The 'Monument for Freedom, Tolerance and Peace' in Oss was erected in memory of residents of this southern Dutch city who died as a soldier or resistance fighter in the second world war or during police actions in the former Dutch East Indies. The names of these...
Monday’s Monument: Obelisk to Peace, New York, New York
"Obelisk to Peace", created by Irving Marantz in 1972, is at the main entrance of 3 Park Avenue (between 33rd & 34th St., in Murray Hill.) It is 23 feet high, made from bronze and is set on a polished granite base. (The photo on the right is of a smaller version...
Monday’s Monument: Freedom Form II & Beloved Community Space, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Created as a tribute to Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. , this weathered steel form is an abstract symbol of two wings, which represent freedom. The wings cross each other at the center from opposite directions, forming a cross. The artist, Daniel LaRue Johnson,...
Monday’s Monument: Peace Obelisk, Wheatley, England
Designed and carved by Simon Buchanan, the obelisk is the brainchild of the School of Economic Science, who own Waterperry Gardens. They commissioned the work so visitors have a greater understanding of the philosophical principles of the school by expressing a common...
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...
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...
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.