The Center for Studying Structures of Race has been engaging with some exciting things! Next week, we will be wrapping up our lecture series “Monuments, Memorial & Memory.” The series has featured prominent artists, architects, and scholars including Charles Gaines, Mabel O. Wilson, Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Nicholas Galanin and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. These individuals’ works addresses the role of monuments and memorials in society and the lectures invite the Roanoke College’s community and the broader public to examine the intersection of art, public memory, and history.
This lecture series precedes the planning of a significant ongoing project. CSSR is partnering with Creative time to erect a permanent memorial on Roanoke’s campus commemorating the enslaved persons who built the college and contributed to the wider region. Creative Time is a prolific fine arts organization that has commissioned and presented public art projects with thousands of artists across the nation and around the world.
These lectures have been incredibly informative and engaging as we have heard from spectacular individuals who think about monuments, memorials, and history in new ways. Architect Mabel O. Wilson explained her role in creating the University of Virginia’s memorial to enslaved laborers. Contemporary artist Nicholas Galanin discussed his installation works that engage with monuments with colonial narratives in the U.S. and abroad. In one work, Shadow on the Land, and Excavation and Bush Burial, Galanin excavates the ground in the shape of the shadow of a statue of Captain Cook in Sydney, Australia. The concept of the work is to dig deep enough to bury these monuments and white supremacist narratives.
