{"id":5027,"date":"2025-12-21T20:06:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=5027"},"modified":"2025-12-21T20:34:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T04:34:27","slug":"the-unsettled-meaning-of-monuments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=5027","title":{"rendered":"Monuments we deserve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have previously discussed statues and monuments in two separate Quillette<\/em> articles published in 2023 and 2025 respectively. The first one was about the muddled mess of a monument<\/a> to MLK by Hank Willis Thomas on Boston Common, and the second about Thomas J Price’s unfortunate installation<\/a> in the Times Square. My most recent publication in the Christmas issue of\u00a0The Spectator<\/em><\/a> considers what monuments reveal about broader societal dynamics. Public monuments are often treated as stable carriers of historical truth, yet their meanings are anything but fixed. They are shaped as much by ideology as by cultural anxiety about preserving nobility and purpose. In this essay, I move beyond familiar arguments for the preservation or removal of statues to ask what these objects actually\u00a0do\u00a0in civic life. At a moment when public memory is deeply contested, monuments become mirrors, reflecting contemporary values as much as the past they claim to represent.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this essay, I look beyond the familiar arguments for preservation or removal to ask what these objects actually do in civic life. Monuments compress history into visible form, but they also expose the tensions between reverence and critique. At a moment when public memory is deeply contested, monuments become mirrors, reflecting contemporary values as much as the past they claim to represent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1256,1257,1],"tags":[1253,404,1016,756,886,612,1251,1250,1254,1252,1255],"class_list":["post-5027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-museum-exhibition","category-museums-art-criticism","category-uncategorized","tag-confederate-monuments","tag-contemporary-art","tag-exhibition","tag-julia-friedman","tag-kara-walker","tag-los-angeles","tag-moca","tag-monuments","tag-social-justice","tag-the-brick","tag-the-spectator"],"yoast_head":"\nMonuments we deserve - Julia Friedman Uncategorized<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What do monuments really commemorate? An art historian explores how public statues reflect ideology, contested memory, and modern civic life.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/juliafriedman.org\/?p=5027\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Monuments we deserve - Julia Friedman Uncategorized\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What do monuments really commemorate? 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