{"id":560,"date":"2011-09-08T21:55:19","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T03:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=560"},"modified":"2011-09-08T21:55:19","modified_gmt":"2011-09-09T03:55:19","slug":"monumentalizing-mlk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=560","title":{"rendered":"The Monumental MLK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public monuments are an important aspect of the good city. In his Art of Building Cities<\/em> (1889)\u2014a book that helped to establish the modern study of urban design\u2014Camillo Sitte<\/a> suggested that monuments \u201cbring back historical memories\u201d and constitute \u201cthe glory and pride\u00a0 of each city.\u201d\u00a0 Monuments educate residents and visitors and provide spaces to reflect on a shared history.\u00a0 They help create and sustain civic identity by psychologically binding citizens to a place and a past.\u00a0 And, as Sitte was especially insightful in noting, decisions about how monuments are placed within urban space (e.g., within squares and plazas) can significantly expand or sharply limit opportunities to engage in social discourse.<\/p>\n

This is why a favorite part of my on-campus and study abroad courses, for instructor and students alike, is our visit to a city\u2019s\u00a0 monumental precinct; e.g.,\u00a0 Denver\u2019s Civic Center Park<\/a> (a classic City Beautiful<\/a> set piece) and London\u2019s Hyde Park Corner<\/a>.\u00a0 We study the styles\u2014classical, figurative, abstract, etc.\u2014that characterize different periods of monument building. We ask why these styles change over time.\u00a0 We analyze the placement of, and spatial relationships between monuments.\u00a0 We inquire into what monuments say about cultural values generally: about who, what, and how we remember.\u00a0 We talk about what\u2019s left out or systematically avoided in the realm of public memory and how such omissions might be addressed: whether with a monument, a museum, or some other cultural production.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

King Memorial (Philip Scott Andrews\/The New York Times)<\/p><\/div>\n

The mother lode of American civic art, of course, is the National Mall <\/a>in Washington DC.\u00a0 Last week the final monument to be built on a Mall that was declared closed in 2003\u2014the Martin Luther King Memorial\u2014was dedicated.\u00a0 The monument has inspired much debate and controversy.\u00a0 Some of the reviews have been pretty critical, like Edward Rothstein\u2019s<\/a> in The New York Times<\/em> and this piece <\/a>in The Economist<\/em>.\u00a0 Debate has focused on the identity of the monument\u2019s sculptor (a Chinese artist rather than an American one), the color of the stone (pale pink rather than black),\u00a0 the physical representation of King (a 30 foot colossus with folded arms, stern look, and missing feet that, arguably, make the subject look more like a socialist autocrat than someone who marched with, and among, the disenfranchised and oppressed), and the King quotes chosen for the Memorial\u2019s wall of inscriptions (nothing about racial division in America or the iconic \u201cI have a Dream\u201d).\u00a0 A major inscription on the south face of the primary King sculpture asserting \u201cI was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness\u201d (see photo above) has drawn particular fire for paraphrasing what King actually said in a sermon in Atlanta on February 4, 1968: \u201c\u2026if you want to say I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.\u201d\u00a0 The poet Maya Angelou<\/a>\u00a0notes that the condensation of King\u2019s actual words and elimination of the all important \u201cIf\u201d clause contradicts the essence of his Atlanta speech, which is about the evils of self-promotion. \u00a0She also suggests–famously–that the paraphrase makes Dr. King sound like \u201can arrogant twit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citizens writing to newspapers and blogs have also offered many good takes.\u00a0 One of the more interesting appeared on the Discussion Forum\u00a0 Archinect<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Does anyone else see the amazing irony in this?\u00a0 All of the other white guys on the National Mall all have buildings, enterable habitable spaces, that house their memories. Whereas MLK is cast aside, outside in the elements, left to fend for his own without the comfort of a white-stone time machine to eternally preserve his image.\u00a0 Which mirrors society perfectly at this moment considering the growing number of homeless, the increasing cost of housing and how housing prices disproportionately affect Blacks, Hispanics and the poor. I guess, judging by our own National Mall, rich white men get roofs whereas black men sleep in the park.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This interpretation overlooks the fact that Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s memorial<\/a> is also located in an open air landscape on the Mall.\u00a0 But why let complicating facts get in the way of a good story?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

"Line of Leadership"<\/p><\/div>\n

Several pundits have offered some particularly thoughtful analyses.\u00a0 Charles Krauthammer <\/a>appreciates the monument\u2019s \u201cartistic deficiencies\u201d but suggests that these are trumped by its placement on the last available piece of prime Mall real estate.\u00a0 King might not be in a temple, but he\u2019s centrally located on a \u201cLine of Leadership\u201d that runs between Lincoln and Jefferson.\u00a0 President Bill Clinton noted the symbolic appropriateness of this context and spatial alignment at the monument\u2019s 2006 groundbreaking<\/a>: \u201cIt belongs here\u2026Jefferson told us we were all created equal and Lincoln abolished slavery, but both left much undone.\u201d \u00a0And that\u2019s why, for this reviewer<\/a>, King should\u00a0<\/em>look stern gazing, as he does, straight across the Tidal Basin at the slave-owning Jefferson.\u00a0 Richard Lacayo<\/a>, in Time Magazine<\/em>, reminds us that another thing the monument gets right is its siting in a grove of cherry trees that blossom in April, the month of King\u2019s assassination. Krauthammer, again, notes that for all the debate\u00a0 about what\u2019s included and excluded on the King Wall of Quotes, the totality<\/em> is consistent with America\u2019s homage to words rather than images of conquest and glory, as befits a nation that was\u00a0founded on an idea.\u00a0 Clarence Page<\/a>, among others, notes that the many quotes referencing \u201cpeoples everywhere\u201d, \u201cevery nation\u201d, and \u201cmankind as a whole\u201d gives we Americans\u2014as well as international visitors to our Mall\u2014a taste of the universalist King rhetoric that has inspired freedom struggles around the world.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For many the simple fact of the King monument’s existence\u2014the only Mall memorial that\u2019s dedicated to an African-American, and a non-President\u2014stamps it as a success.\u00a0 Another indicator of the monument\u2019s success is the debates it has inspired, as sampled above. Public monuments will always embody\u00a0 contradictions, ironies, and omissions. People will always experience and interpret them differently\u2026especially when their subjects are deeply controversial.\u00a0 But history also tells us that heated debate about the form and meaning of a monument can give way, over time, to popular acceptance and even deep affection. \u00a0Exhibit A is Maya Lin\u2019s Vietnam Veteran\u2019s Memorial<\/a>.\u00a0 Ferociously controversial at its creation, the VVM has become the most visited and, arguably, best loved of all National Mall monuments.\u00a0 Interestingly, it is frequently mentioned by critics of the King Memorial as an example of how a National Memorial should<\/em> be designed.\u00a0 But it would be a dull commemorative landscape indeed if all we had to visit were Lin knock-offs, or what several writers (e.g., here<\/a> and here<\/a>) have described as \u201ctherapeutic\u201d monuments.\u00a0 At the end of the day Clarence Page offers the best advice to MLK monument opinionators: give the memorial a chance. \u201cFine memorials can be like fine wines. They get better with age. The real test of the King Memorial, as with the others, is how well they look to us in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Public monuments are an important aspect of the good city. In his Art of Building Cities (1889)\u2014a book that helped to establish the modern study of urban design\u2014Camillo Sitte suggested that monuments \u201cbring back historical memories\u201d and constitute \u201cthe glory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-92","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}