In the summer 2007, I boarded a ferry headed to Spectacle Island in Boston. Though I had been living in the city for four years, I had never explored the series of small islands known as the Harbor Islands just off shore. Upon arrival on the island, I put on a set of headphones and began traversing the landscape. Playing …

In July 1864, as the Civil War raged, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a bill for the creation of the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, the nation’s first statue collection. The collection displays two statues from each state in the union, honoring notable native sons and daughters from across the country. Unlike previous artistic projects in …

This paper traces the commissioning process for New York City’s Women’s Rights Pioneer Monument as a case study for the current, highly contentious politics of monument-building. The Central Park statue — as of this writing, not yet realized — has followed a protracted, frequently contested path since its conception in 2015. It was designed to depict women’s rights activists Susan …