IMAGINING MONUMENTS for NEWARK Salamishah Tillet and Paul Farber
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FALL 2019 PRESENTED BY NEW ARTS JUSTICE AND MONUMENT LAB MILITARY PARK THE TIME IS NOW: IMAGINING MONUMENTS FOR NEWARK Salamishah Tillet and Paul Farber There is a great peace, after the war great love, after the hatred –Amiri Baraka Located in the heart of Newark’s Military Park, one of the nation’s oldest public spaces, a large bronze sculpture sits elevated on a raised pedestal layered with granite on its outer edges. The sculp- ture, Wars of America, is nearly a century old and included on the National Register of Historic Places. It forges the middle ground of a park that has been and continues to be a throughway, a gathering place, and a space to consider the multiple narratives that comprise Newark of yesteryear and today. Wars of America stands out from most other war monuments in Newark and elsewhere, as it elevates a collective of people rather than a single heroic icon. Conjuring references of American conflicts from the Revolution through the Civil War and World War I, this grouping does not merely lionize the leaders of End Apartheid Now rally, 1986. Photo: Manuel Acevedo battle or abstract them in dignified poses. All forty- two of the human figures are depicted in the midst of struggles, on and off the battlefield, whether leaning toward conquest or reserved in protection or defi- patriotism, gatherings and displacement, and memo- to the South; anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s; ance. In front of the monument, a reflecting pool once ry and historical amnesia. and the city’s annual Afro Beat festival today. extended outward in the shape of a sword, before it In addition to the Wars of America, Borglum is As the home to some of Newark’s most storied, was converted more recently into a flower bed. the artist behind three other works in the city, in- inherited monuments and bordered by cultural an- The purpose of the statue, it seems, was a state- cluding Seated Lincoln (1911), chors in the city including NJPAC, ment of nationalism enmeshed within perpetual cy- Indian and the Puritan (1916), and Express Newark, Newark Arts, and cles of conflict. When sculptor Gutzon Borglum, later First Landing Party of the Founders What is WBGO, Military Park is a power- famed for creating Mount Rushmore, looked at his of Newark (1916). This series of ear- ful place to engage artists, stu- finished statue in the park on Memorial Day 1926, lier sculptures led into his relation- dents, and city residents around he proclaimed “the design represents a great spear- ship with city leaders and his com- a timely questions about the city’s cultural head. Upon the green field of this spearhead we have mision for Military Park, a statue memory and creative approaches placed a Tudor sword, the hilt of which represents whose dominance and placement monument to shaping its next chapters. To- the American nation at a crisis, answering the call to make it hard to ignore and yet dif- day, we see Military Park as a place arms.” ficult to engage. for to conjure new forms of monumen- Though we initially encountered the statue at On the other side of the park tal representation and reflection. different times (Salamishah, a native Newarker and rests a modest but moving historical A Call to Peace is an homage to Paul, a visiting curator from Philadelphia), our shared marker honoring veteran Archie Cal- Newark? sacrifice and struggle; dreams of relationship to the statue shifted upon learning lahan Jr., the first African American democracy and deferred uplift; two facts: first, that Borglum was closely affiliated Newark resident killed during the attacks on Pearl and the challenge of living together with the weight with the Klu Klux Klan, and second, that he import- Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. It was first dedicated in 1942, but of our histories. ed part of its granite base from Stone Mountain in miles away at Douglas Harrison Park, and later moved Now, as the park’s organizers are in the process Georgia, where he was in the process of designing a to Military Park in 2005. These two monuments are of refurbishing the sculpture and officially updating Confederate monument. touchstones for a park that has and continues to be the story told through around it in the park, including As a result, we felt that we had a unique oppor- space at which everyday citizens, soldiers, and veter- telling more truths about its sculptor and what it rep- tunity to challenge his “calls to arms” with its oppo- ans meet. It was the gathering space for Union sol- resents, we ask the central question in our exhibition site and hopeful antidote: A Call to Peace. Our title diers before they embarked to fight in the Civil War; reflects Military Park as a contested site of pride and for Civil Rights workers as they boarded buses going CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 4 AMERICANA: CONTEXTUALIZING WARS OF 10 SNEAK PEEK: MONUMENTAL COLLECTIONS CONTENTS AMERICA AND SCULPTOR GUTZON BORGLUM Mark Krasovic 10 PEACE VISION STATEMENTS 6 ARTIST PROJECTS 11 CREDITS 1 THE TIME IS NOW: IMAGINING MONUMENTS FOR NEWARK 8 LAB RESEARCH 12 EVENT CALENDAR Salamishah Tillet and Paul Farber 9 GATEKEEPERS OF PEACE 12 MAP 3 VETERANS PEACE PROJECT Alliyah Allen 1 for the here and now: what is a timely monument for Newark? A Call to Peace invited four artists – Manuel Acevedo, Chakaia Booker, Sonya Clark, and Jamel Shabazz – all artists known for their innovative ap- proaches to art and social justice to create tem- porary prototype monuments that take up this question. The artists’ projects offer artworks and activations which respectively focus on underrepre- sented veterans, engaging the legacies of the Con- federate statues, and addressing the relationship between public spaces and historical memory. The artists were invited based on their interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to monumental work, their relationships with Newark, and their innovative and healing approaches to militarism and/or peace practices. In a city with a strong artist-activist history, including Black Arts Movement poet Amiri Baraka’s Spirit House, visual artists Gladys Grauer and Jerry Gant, and now its current Mayor Ras Baraka, who himself has a background in spoken word, among others, the moment to reanimate the conversation Chakaia Booker, Serendipity, 1998-99 (Previous installation with the Public Art Fund in New York City's MetroTech Commons) We must find new, critical ways to reflect on the monuments we have inherited and imagine future monuments we have yet to build about art, public space, and justice is now. Build- ing on the momentum of the city’s successful public art projects like “Gateways to Newark,” the art wall at Fairmount Switching Station, and the forthcoming Four Corners, we see A Call to Peace as an invita- tion to members of the public to help redefine these complex histories and contested public spaces. Alongside the artist installations, New Arts and Monument Lab will open a participatory research lab, staffed by local artists and educators, where passersby will be invited to contribute their own speculative monument proposals. The collected Sonya Clark, Woven replica of the Confederate Flag of Truce, 2019. Photo: Carlos Avendaño / Fabric Workshop and Museum responses will be added to an open database, posted on a community board in Express Newark, and shared as a report to the city in 2020. (The approach is based on similar methods Monument Lab’s team has used in Philadelphia in 2015 and 2017, respectively.) Every Thursday, the lab will also host weekly "Monumental Conversations" with critical members of Newark’s community who are actively working on issues of monuments, cultural memory, and historic preservation. Our exhibition is not meant as a start to a dialogue, but a gathering of various ongoing threads of critical and creative voices already and continually doing the work. Our hope is that visitors in Military Park and Express Newark speak with our Lab team; attend events; and submit monument proposals to help collectively unpack, reframe, and reset a viewpoint on what monuments we have and what monuments could define our landscape for the next generation. In 2019, 400 years after the first enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown, our nation continues to experience a moment of intensity and uncertainty around public monuments — especially those that symbolize the enduring legacy of racial injustice and social inequality — we are reminded that we must find new, critical ways to reflect on the monuments we have inherited and imagine future monuments we have yet to build. A Call to Peace is envisioned Manuel Acevedo, BUG OUT (Tank Version), 2009 as an opportunity for meaningful dialogue, multidisciplinary approaches to public art and public history, and collective call for social justice. ■ 2 VETERANS PEACE PROJECT The first portraits from Jamel Shabazz's growing archive honoring underrepresented Newark veterans and their families are installed as large scale images opposite the Wars of America monument. Photographed last summer in collaboration with SHINE Portrait Studio, these depict Larry “Free” Dyer (a Newark-born Vietnam Veteran, pictured below) and Jillian M. Rock (the daughter of the late Jerome Rock, a Newark-born Vietnam Veteran). A dual portrait of Ause and Natasha Dyer (grandchildren of the late William “Big Man” Roosevelt Lancaster, a Newark-born Korean War Veteran) is located in Express Newark. Jamel Shabazz, Portrait of "Larry 'Free' Dyer," Veterans Peace Project, 2019 Honoring Big Man Honoring Jerome Rock In their portrait, Ause and Natasha Dyer stand side by side, The legacy of my father is something I hold not just close to holding up the flag bestowed to their late grandfather William my heart but in the marrow of my bones.