Troubling Monuments: A symposium on the making and unmaking of heritage and history

The IAS is delighted to host and fund this panel discussion organised by Anna Marazuela Kim (IAS) and Stephanie Schwartz (Art History, UCL)

Last month, the German art collective Centre for Political Beauty constructed a partial replica of Berlin's Holocaust memorial outside the home of a politician of the far-right Alternative for Germany. Across the United States, controversy and division over the removal of Confederate statues continue to engender protest and violence, at times extreme. Proposals for the reconstruction of sites destroyed by wars in the Middle East, re-appropriated as the 'cradle of civilization', are motivating struggles and alliances over cultural heritage on a geopolitical scale. Troubling Monuments offers a forum for debating the cultural, political and ideological stakes of these new image wars.

Opening with six short image-based presentations by researchers working in the fields of art history, architecture, anthropology and heritage studies, the Symposium aims to engage its audience in a critical conversation about the processes by which artists, researchers and publics make and re-make history and heritage. Drawing diverse historical, material and virtual sites into dialogue, the event engages new histories of monumentality and iconoclasm to reflect upon the work that takes place through the institutional framing of sites as the terrain of war. 

Speakers:

• Anna Marazuela Kim (IAS/UCL) Introduction to the Symposium: Troubling Monuments
• Tamar Garb (IAS/Art History/UCL) Rising and Falling: The Case of Cecil John Rhodes + Stephanie Schwartz (Art History.UCL) Shouting on a Small Scale: On Photography and Protest 
• Edward Denison (The Bartlett/UCL): Post-colonial city as contested monument + Natasha Eaton (Art History) Photography, ruination and vagrancy: the immigration depot in Port Louis, Mauritius 
• Adrian Forty (The Bartlett/UCL) The Materials of Monuments + Anna Marazuela Kim (IAS/UCL) Breaking and re-making monuments: three interventions in art and architecture

Free and open to all. This event will be followed by a reception.

Image: Anna Marazuela Kim (2017) Confederate statues at the crossroads, Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia.