Confederate monuments and Mount Rushmore
are examples of social commentary in a public space.
Confederate Monuments
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/t-magazine/most-influential-protest-art.html
An 2020 image of the late Georgia congressman and civil rights pioneer US Representative John Lewis is projected onto the pedestal of the statue of confederate General Robert E Lee, in Richmond, Virginia. The statue was removed in 2021. PICTURE: AP Photo/Steve Helber.
Mount Rushmore
Carved into the southeastern face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest are four gigantic sculptures depicting the faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
The 60-foot high faces were shaped from the granite rock face between 1927 and 1941, and represent one of the world’s largest pieces of sculpture, as well as one of America’s most popular tourist attractions. To many Native Americans, however, Mount Rushmore represents a desecration of lands considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux, the original residents of the Black Hills region who were displaced by white settlers and gold miners in the late 19th century.
In the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed in 1868 by Sioux tribes and General William T. Sherman, the U.S. government promised the Sioux “undisturbed use and occupation” of territory including the Black Hills, in what is now South Dakota. But the discovery of gold in the region soon led U.S. prospectors to flock there en masse, and the U.S. government began forcing the Sioux to relinquish their claims on the Black Hills. Source: https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/mount-rushmore-1
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