The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation earlier this week announced its latest plans for its Monuments Project, intended to “transform the nation’s memorial landscape” by 2025. The five-year, $250 million grant initiative funds public works of art across the United States that “more fully and accurately represent the multiplicity and complexity of American histories,” according to a press release from the foundation. The organization will distribute nine Monuments Project grants this summer to support public art projects in nine cities. Asheville, North Carolina; Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Providence, Rhode Island and San Francisco will share $25 million.
The new round of grants brings the total funds awarded so far to approximately $152 million, and the number of recipients to date to 67. Among the projects undertaken by the aforementioned cities are Boston’s De-monument | Re-monument | Demonstration: Transforming Boston, which will foster conversations and new narratives around the city’s existing landmarks through temporary commemorative art installations and related free programming; and construction in Los Angeles of a new memorial to the victims of the 1871 Chinese Massacre. Columbus and Portland will use the money to relocate or remove recently removed monuments, while Denver and San Francisco will use it to fund audits of their existing landmarks.
“Through the monuments and memorials that mark them, our civic spaces are where many of us first experience American history,” Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement. . “These grants strengthen new commemorative opportunities in American cities so that we can better understand this history and the history that informs it, and so that we can celebrate the collective achievements and extraordinary deeds that these new monuments and memorials will honor. in civic spaces across the country. ”
