For more information and updates on Pulling Together, join our mailing list
Monument Lab has been invited by the the Trust for the National Mall to curate Pulling Together, the inaugural exhibition of the Beyond Granite initiative on the National Mall in the Fall of 2023. The exhibition features prototype monuments that respond to the central curatorial question, “What stories remain untold on the National Mall?” Pulling Together builds out platforms for artist-led civic engagement, historical interpretation, and storytelling as a means for advancing what it means to imagine, build, live, and grow with monuments in the nation’s capital and beyond. This project, a partnership among the Trust, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) and the National Park Service (NPS), is funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project.
Pulling Together is inspired by the 1939 Easter Sunday performance of renowned Black opera singer, Marian Anderson, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, as she was barred from nearby Constitution Hall due to segregation in the capital. Her performance remains monumental in public memory with educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune remarking at the time that the performance “told a story of hope for tomorrow–a story of triumph–a story of pulling together, a story of splendor and real democracy.” The goal of the exhibition is to bring together innovative and experimental forms of monumentality and memory-making to shine a light on and acknowledge Indigenous legacies, histories of enslavement, civil rights, LGBTQ activism, pathways for immigration, environmental justice, and other narratives of American struggle and survival.
Director and Founder of Monument Lab, Dr. Paul Farber, and Pulitzer Prize Winner, Dr. Salamishah Tillet, are co-curating the exhibition, treating monuments as “a statement of power and presence in public.” They are guiding the creative process for identifying and curating the artists, installations, and sites for the exhibition.
Monument Lab proud to present the six visionary artists that will be bringing commemorative exhibition to life on the National Mall in the Fall of 2023: