A Monumental Moment: Considering the Future of Philly's Public Art

A Monumental Moment: Considering the Future of Philly's Public Art

Over the summer, our country engaged in renewed conversations and reckonings around the racist history of some of our public monuments. Here in Philadelphia, debates around monuments of Frank Rizzo and Christopher Columbus led to those monuments being removed. And conversations continue around a lack of diverse representations in Philly monuments.

Join us as we consider the past, present, and future of Philly’s monuments with the editors and contributors of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia from Temple University Press. 

Featuring a special introduction by artist Hank Willis Thomas.

This program is co-sponsored by Temple Contemporary. 

About the speakers:

Paul M. Farber is the artistic director of Monument Lab and senior research scholar at the Center for Public Art and Space at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-editor of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia and the author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall.

Jane Golden has been the executive director of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program for 30 years. Under Golden's direction, the Mural Arts Program has become the largest program of its kind in the United States. She is the co-author of Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell and More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell and co-editor of Philadelphia Mural Arts @ 30.

Homay King is a professor of the history of art and cofounder of the Program in Film Studies at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of Virtual Memory:Time-Based Art and the Dream of Digitality and Lost in Translation: Orientalism, Cinema, and the Enigmatic Signifier. Her essays on film, contemporary art, and theory have appeared in Afterall, Criticism, Discourse, Film Criticism, Film Quarterly, October, Qui Parle, and elsewhere.

Ken Lum is the chief curatorial advisor of Monument Lab and an artist and professor in and chair of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the co-editor of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia and a co-author of Shanghai Modern: 1919 – 1945His most recent book, Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life 1991 - 2018, was issued in January 2020.

Stephanie Mach is a Diné (Navajo) doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the history of anthropological museums and their changing practices in the wake of postcolonial and settler colonial critiques. Mach is also an academic coordinator at the Penn Museum.

Karyn Olivier was born in Trinidad and Tobago and creates sculptures, installations, and public art. Her work often intersects and collapses multiple histories and memories with present-day narratives. She has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan Biennials, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art's P.S.1, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, among others. Olivier is currently an associate professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art.

This program will be presented via Zoom. On the day of the program, use this link to join: https://temple.zoom.us/j/98991829534

All programs are free and open to all, and registration is encouraged. 

Date:
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Time:
5:30pm - 7:00pm
Location:
Online
Registration has closed.