Monuments and memorials

Episode No. 391 looks at art and its relationship to monuments and memorials in the United States and features art historian Sarah Beetham, activist Julia Pulawski and artist Ebony G. Patterson.

Sarah Beetham (Twitter) is an assistant professor of art history at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She's working on a book titled "Monumental Crisis: Accident, Vandalism and the Civil War Citizen Soldier," a look at how monuments have become central to a range of American discourses in the many decades since the Civil War.

Julia Pulawski is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and along with artist Annie Simpson is part of an ad hoc group of Chapel Hill activists that erected guerilla monuments to James Cates and an anonymized Negro Wench in Chapel Hill. 

Ebony G. Patterson is an artist whose work updates the memorial form and expands it to include people and groups typically excluded from the American memorial and monument tradition. The Perez Art Museum Miami is presenting a solo exhibition of Patterson's work titled ... while the dew is still on the roses... through May 5.