Join the Monument Lab board, staff, artists, partners, and friends on May 23rd at the Independence Visitor Center in Philadelphia to celebrate our collective work and dance the night away. This year’s theme, “Monumental Futures,” celebrates our collective power to create new futures from our inherited past. Join us as we mark another year of building connections, celebrating community, and creating change together.

Purchase an All-Access ticket to join us for a special reception and Awards Ceremony (5:30–7pm) where we will honor Declaration House artist Sonya Clark and Monument Lab co-founder Ken Lum. 

Immediately following the Awards Ceremony, we’ll gather for the Promument party: an evening of dancing, art, food, and celebration. Dress to impress and come as you are. We can’t wait to see you there! 

Get your Early Bird tickets today and receive a limited edition Monument Futures print, while supplies last!

Date & Time: 
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Awards Ceremony and Reception | 5:30pm - 7:00pm
Promument Party | 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Become a Monument Lab Sponsor
Reach out to our team at [email protected] to discuss sponsorship options. In-kind contributions welcome. Deadline for Sponsorship submission: May 3, 2024

Monumental Awards
Monument Lab is thrilled to announce our honorees for Promument 2024 – Declaration House’s Sonya Clark will receive the Monumental Artist Award, and Monument Lab co-founder Ken Lum will receive the Changemaker Award.

Past honorees include Salamishah Tillet, Clint Smith, Michelle Angela Ortiz, and Karyn Olivier. 

Celebrate Sonya Clark and Ken Lum on May 23, 2024 at the Independence Park Visitor Center in Philadelphia! Purchase an All-Access ticket for Promument 2024, Monument Lab’s Annual Fundraising Event, which includes an Awards Ceremony and Reception to honor these beloved and esteemed honorees.

About the Awardees

Sonya Clark is an artist and the Winifred L. Arms Professor of Art and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously, she held a University Professorship in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University where she served as chair for the Craft/Material Studies Department for over a decade. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and was honored with their Distinguished Alumni Award in 2011. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received an honorary doctorate in 2023. Her first college degree is from Amherst College where, in 2015, she also received an honorary doctorate. In 2021, she was awarded additional honorary doctorates from Franklin and Marshall College and Maine College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in over 500 museums and galleries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia. Clark is the recipient of many awards including a United States Artist Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Rappaport Prize, Art Prize, Pollock Krasner Award, and two Art Matters Grants. She been an artist at the Red Gate Residency in China, the BAU Camargo Residency in France, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency in Italy, the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in DC, the Civitella Ranieri Residency in Italy, Yaddo Residency in NY, Affiliate Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Indigo Arts Alliance in Maine, Black Rock Senegal Residency, and Bogliasco in Italy. Her work has been favorably reviewed in the New York Times, Le Monde, Sculpture, Art in America, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, Time, Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, Mother Jones, Huffington Post, ArtForum, PBS, NPR, BBC and many others.

Sonya Clark is the featured artist for Declaration House, a Monument Lab project opening this summer in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park.

Ken Lum is the Marilyn Jordan Taylor Presidential Professor and Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. He has previously taught at the University of British Columbia, École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Akademie der Bildenden Kunst in Munich, California College of the Arts in San Francisco, China Art Academy in Hangzhou, and Bard College.

Lum is the co-founder and founding editor of Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and has published extensively. His book of writings, "Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life", was published in 2021 by Concordia University Press. He has given keynote addresses at the annual congress of the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics in Philadelphia, the inauguration of the Melly Project Space in Rotterdam, the World Museums Conference in Shanghai, and the 2006 Biennale of Sydney in Australia. Lum was the Project Manager for the seminal exhibition "The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945 – 1994" in 2001. He was the co-curator of the 7th Sharjah Biennial in 2001 and "Shanghai Modern: 1919 – 1945" in the same year. Lum has exhibited widely, including at the São Paulo Biennial in 1998, Shanghai Biennale in 2000, Documenta 11 in 2002, Istanbul Biennial in 2007, and the Gwangju Biennale in 2008. He has also made permanent public art commissions for Vienna, Vancouver, Utrecht, Leiden, St. Moritz, Toronto, and St. Louis.  He is the winner of several awards, including the Scotiabank Photography Award, the Order of Canada, a Pew Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

He is represented by Magenta Plains Gallery, New York, Royale Projects, Los Angeles, Misa Shin Gallery, Tokyo, and Gallery Nagel Draxler, Berlin. Ken is co-founder of Monument Lab and currently serves as Chief Curatorial Advisor.

Image Credit: Promument Annual Celebration, Philadelphia, 2023, (Torian Studios).