Erin L. Thompson * Social Justice Power Hour!
As America’s only professor of art crime, Erin studies the black market for looted antiquities, art forgery, museum theft, the ethics of digital reproductions of cultural heritage, art made by detainees at Guantánamo Bay, & a variety of other overlaps between art & crime. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee for the Nepal Heritage Recovery Campaign.
Tonite we'll be choppin' it up about her new book, "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments" (W. W. Norton & Company) in which she lays bare the turbulent history of American monuments & its abundant ironies, from the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom that tops the United States Capitol to the fervent Klansman fired from sculpting the world’s largest Confederate monument~ who went on to carve Mount Rushmore, & she explores the surprising motivations behind contemporary flashpoints, including the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol, the question of who should be represented on the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, & the decision by a museum of African American culture to display a Confederate monument removed from a public park.
Written with great verve & informed by a keen sense of American history, "Smashing Statues" gives us the context we need to consider the fundamental questions for rebuilding not only our public landscape but our nation as a whole~ Whose voices must be heard, & whose pain must remain private?
Erin has written & spoken about the science of public art, the history of protests, the legal barriers to removal of controversial art, & examples of innovative approaches to the problem in venues including Art in America, Hyperallergic, Smithsonian Magazine, bitch, & the New York Times, & we're thrilled she's sharin' her time, energy, & spirit with us tonite...
Join Erin & our own BRCSJ Chief Activist Robt Seda-Schreiber in virtual community-buildin' conversation equally empowerin' & entertainin'
7pm ET/4pm PT
Bayard Rustin Center for Social Justice virtual HQ
facebook.com/rustincenter
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