The National Monument Audit, produced by Monument Lab in partnership with The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, assesses the current monument landscape across the United States.
Monument Lab’s research team spent a year scouring almost a half million records of historic properties created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources. For our deepest investigations, we focused on a study set of approximately 50,000 conventional monuments representing data collected from every US state and territory. The National Monument Audit allows us to better understand the dynamics and trends that have shaped our monument landscape, to pose questions about common knowledge about monuments, and to debunk falsehoods and misperceptions within public memory. The National Monument Audit is meant to inform Mellon’s landmark Monuments Project, a $250 million investment designed to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces and ensure that future generations inherit a commemorative landscape that venerates and reflects the vast, rich complexity of the American story.”
by Elizabeth Alexander, President, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
by Paul M. Farber, Sue Mobley, and Laurie Allen, Co-Directors, National Monument Audit, Monument Lab
by Paul M. Farber, Sue Mobley, and Laurie Allen, Co-Directors, National Monument Audit, Monument Lab
2. George Washington (171)
3. Christopher Columbus (149)
4. Martin Luther King Jr. (86)
5. Saint Francis of Assisi (73)
6. Robert E. Lee (59)
7. Casimir Pulaski (51)
8. Benjamin Franklin (48)
9. John F. Kennedy (44)
10. Thomas Jefferson (36)
11. Ulysses S. Grant (35)
12. Stonewall Jackson (33)
13. Jefferson Davis (30)
15. Andrew Jackson (27)
16. Theodore Roosevelt (27)
17. William McKinley (27)
18. Joan of Arc (26)
19. Nathan Hale (24)
20. William Shakespeare (24)
21. José Marti (23)
22. Thaddeus Kosciuszko (22)
23. William Clark (22)
24. Harriet Tubman (21)
25. Tecumseh (21)
26. Alexander Hamilton (20)
28. Sacagawea (20)
29. Frederick Douglass (19)
30. Martin Luther (19)
31. Jacques Marquette (18)
32. Dwight Eisenhower (17)
33. Franklin D. Roosevelt (17)
34. Anthony Wayne (16)
35. Merriweather Lewis (16)
36. Simón Bolivar (16)
37. Robert L. Burns (15)
38. St. Paul (15)
39. Washington Irving (14)
41. George Rogers Clark (13)
42. John Marshall (13)
43. John Sullivan (13)
44. Nathan Bedford Forrest (13)
45. Oliver Hazard Perry (13)
46. Sam Houston (13)
47. Daniel Boone (12)
48. David Glasgow Farragut (12)
49. James Garfield (12)
50. John Logan (12)
by Heather Shirey and David Todd Lawrence, Co-Directors, Urban Art Mapping
by Jillian McManemin, Toppled Monuments Archive
by Catherine D'Ignazio, MIT Data + Feminism Lab
by Jane Golden, Mural Arts Philadelphia
by Ken Lustbader
by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, and Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu
September 29
Join Dr. Elizabeth Alexander, President of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Dr. Paul Farber, Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, for a discussion that will dive into Monument Lab’s findings and explore what they mean for the future of our commemorative landscape.
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Webinar
September 30
Join Monument Lab for a deep dive into monument data. We will explore methods from the audit and other monument tracking projects, as well as themes in monument record keeping and the legacies and limitations of cultural heritage data.
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Roundtable
October 4
Join Monument Lab for a roundtable with educators from around the country to discuss ways of teaching and engaging the National Monument Audit. The panelists will discuss the ways classrooms – especially K-12 classrooms, college courses, and arts and cultural spaces – can participate in extending the learnings from the audit.
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Co-Directors
Laurie Allen
Paul Farber
Sue Mobley
Project Data Artist
Brian Foo
Contributing Editor
Patricia Eunji Kim
Design
William Hodgson
Froyo Tam
Jakob Rosenzweig
Project Managers
Matthew Seamus Callinan
Greta Gabriel
Research Associates
Alissa Ujie Diamond
Chrislyn Laurie Laurore
Allison Nkwocha
Malkia Okech
Christopher Roberts
Pamela Nicole Walker
Phoebe Young
Interns
Veronica Brown
Rudy Gerson
Anna Green
Nicole Piepenbrink
Lena Popkin
Hana Pyzik
Saguna Raina
Communications
Florie Hutchinson
Dina Paola Rodriguez
Jose Vazquez
Educational Advisor
Rabiya Kassam-Clay
Copy Editor
Gretchen Dykstra
Advisory Board
Andrea Roberts (Texas A&M University)
Katrina Phillips (Macalester College)
Kirk Savage (University of Pittsburgh)
Krystal Strong (University of Pennsylvania)
Geoff Ward (Washington University of St. Louis)
Monument Lab Staff
Kristen Giannantonio
Naima Murphy Salcido
Nico Rodriguez
Sarah Spencer
Legal Partners
Harvard Cyberlaw Clinic
Special thanks to
Elizabeth Alexander, Julie Ehrlich, Justin Garrett Moore, Vanessa Correa, Tatiana Evans, Josie Hodson, the Monument Lab Advisory Board, Shannon Mattern, John Carr, Julia Guerrero, Materials Conservation, attendees of the audit focus groups, and the Center for Public Art and Space and the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.
Supported by
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation