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Emerson College Hosts Panel to Discuss the Removal of Offensive Monuments

Emerson College Hosts Panel to Discuss the Removal of Offensive Monuments

“I wanted to point out the importance of claiming space and saying names as acts of resistance”

Has it ever occurred to anyone on the left that they come off as the disturbing authoritarians they accuse Trump of being? This is positively Orwellian.

From the school paper, the Berkeley Beacon:

Artists, activists come together for “Memorials: As Monuments Fall” webinar

Historical monuments and who they seek to memorialize have come under harsh scrutiny in 2020. Emerson Contemporary, along with a team of professors and activist artists, came together on Oct. 14 at a virtual panel titled “Memorials: As Monuments Fall,” where they discussed the removal of outdated or offensive monuments as more are taken down across the country.

Leonie Bradbury, distinguished curator-in-residence of Emerson Contemporary, the college’s platform for showcasing contemporary visual art, moderated the panel with the intent of hosting an open conversation.

“I wanted to feel like you were sitting at a table with these people,” Bradbury said. “This is a topic that is very challenging, but it is also very current. We really wanted to respond to this moment.”

The panel comes just months after Mayor Marty Walsh authorized the removal of the North End Christopher Colombus statue, stating that the historical meaning behind the statue will be assessed.

The once-beheaded memorial is set to be erected once again at the North Marginal Street chapter of Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic fraternal organization. Mayor Marty Walsh said that in the original statue’s place, a monument “highlighting the Italian immigrants of the North End,” will be it’s replacement.

The plans for when this statue will be erected, as well as its design, is still undetermined.

The first speaker on the panel, professor of art history Dr. Cher Krause Knight, kicked off the conversation with a statement about claiming monuments as a place for acts of resistance.

Knight cited two Black Lives Matter public art pieces in Washington D.C., which she said were created in response to President Donald Trump’s militaristic action against peaceful protesters.

“I wanted to point out the importance of claiming space and saying names as acts of resistance,” Knight said at the panel. “It’s an acknowledgment of public space It’s claiming a voice and a presence.”

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Comments

If the people at the Berkley Beacon can’t proofread their articles and correct obvious mistakes, they need to go back to the junior high school I attended in (horrors!) Alabama in the sixties. They’re laughed at for a reason: The one they supply.
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