Department of Art History

Down with Monuments? On the Making and Unmaking of Public Monuments

Recent confrontations over monuments have highlighted the tensions in their nature as acts of power and works of art, as objects about the present as about the past. But, what is the best way to address these historical objects? And how have they been addressed in other historical contexts around the globe? Following a keynote lecture by art historian Michele Bogart (AM '75, PhD '79), panelists including Miguel Caballero-Vazquez, Wu Hung, Pamela Karimi, and Mechtild Widrich will present examples for how people have responded to the tension between a changing politic and an inanimate symbol. 

Presented by the Department of Art History and School of the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with UChicago Arts, Sawyer Seminar on Urban Art and Urban Form, and the Mansueto Institute, on the occasion of UChicago and SAIC’s co-commissioning of the American Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2018.