Public statues express our values and the people and events we want to celebrate and remember. What new public monuments can be imagined? Contemporary artists, community groups, and museum visitors were invited to propose new sculptures for the public sphere. The results are currently projected in the Museum, coordinating with the exhibition Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History.
In the 1860s, Stebbins created three artworks that are part of our public landscape today. A civic
group hired her to create Horace Mann, a wealthy individual commissioned her to sculpt Christopher Columbus, and a government entity asked her to make the Bethesda Fountain. Existing monuments tell an incomplete and skewed story about our past. In 2021, a “National Monument Audit” (conducted by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the non-profit organization The Monument Lab) revealed that America’s monument landscape is “overwhelmingly white and male” and most commonly reflects “war and conquest.” Contemporary artists visiting the Museum were tasked with imagining a much more complete picture that represented different people, cultures, and stories.
Artists chosen for the Museum projection are:
Edward Acosta, Guardian of the Horizon, painted bronze
Hwa Young Caruso, Georgia O’Keeffe: Mother of American Modernism, black granite
Leeanna Chipana, Mama Wan Wawita, Painted terracotta
Robyn Cooper, A Place to Belong, oversized wood blocks
Gabriela Gonzalez Dellosso, Varo’s Moon: Homage to Remedios Varo, Bronze
Sueey Gutierrez, Ixchel: Madre Celestial, bronze
Brianna Hernández, Eternal Cenotaph, stained glass
Lori Horowitz, Balance of Liberty, cast bronze with patina or welded steel armature over mixed media with epoxy coating
Shazia Jabeen, The Attainer, dark brushed bronze or copperAnna Jurinich, Continuous Love, Glass, Epoxy, Plastic, Silver and Aluminum
Lita Kelmenson, Ode to the Common Man, bronze
Han Qin, Balance Totem, ink on paper
Lori Shorin, Interconnected: A Monument to Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, bronze
Joan Kim Suzuki, Gift of Remembrance, bronze
Mark Van Wagner, Island of Samothrace, reinforced concrete and blue quartz sparkle
See the complete list of artists’ works on The Heckscher Museum Bloomberg Connects app.
