A very nice write-up about Monument Avenue Richmond in Architects + Artisans.

But they’re all symbols of a mindset that’s no longer credible. “The statues were erected after the Civil War, in a period of denial,” he says. “It certainly felt like this was a historic moment and needed to be documented.

”Rose had been in Berlin in 1989 when the wall there came down, and photographed it. Richmond, he thought, was on the cusp of the same kind of change. “There was a short moment when they took down the wall, before it moved into another period,” he says. “And this was similar.”

It feels like we’ve crossed a threshold to another era, but I worry that this moment will be as fleeting as that one. The opening of the Berlin Wall, and what it represented – the breaking down of political and cultural barriers – was obliterated a decade later in the fire and dust of the World Trade Center in New York – another threshold to a new, darker, chapter in history.

Jefferson Davis monument with members of the Daughters of the Confederacy

The Black Lives Matter movement and the removal of symbols of hatred and oppression – and necessarily the removal of Donald Trump – could signal a move forward to greater awareness of ongoing intolerance and injustice, and toward a more diverse, more inclusive society. Undoubtedly, the struggle will continue.

Their Lost Cause myths now exploded, their monuments’ time, too, has come and gone, though Rose is ambivalent on that subject. “I’m sympathetic to the desire to remove these things, but I’d almost like to see these symbols of evil remain in the center of Richmond, because removing them doesn’t remove the root cause,” he says.

The most powerful memorials to injustice disturb the status quo. They don’t aestheticize evil by abstracting it or normalizing it. We need reminders of our capacity to do harm manifest, visible, in the public square, not just entombed in museums. Richmond now has an opportunity to reconsider its past, and its role in the present, as former capital of the Confederacy, capital of Virginia, and, perhaps, emerging symbol of civic rebirth.

Rumor of War by Kehinde Wiley – © Brian Rose