In the midst of the United States’ monumental reckoning and reimagining, Monument Lab compiled the first-ever National Monument Audit (2021). To produce the Audit, our research team spent a year scouring almost half a million records of historic properties created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources. We looked for conventional monuments—statues or monoliths constructed with stone or metal, installed or maintained in a public space. For Monument Lab’s deepest investigations, we focused on a study set of approximately 50,000 conventional monuments representing data collected from every US state and territory. This landmark study has been cited by numerous federal, state, local, institutional, and grassroots organizations as a transformative way of understanding and reimagining our inherited monument landscape.
For the MONUMENTS exhibition, Monument Lab revisited the Audit to produce an original artwork—a newly commissioned single-channel digital work powered by a series of data cloud visualizations that reconsiders what it means to map the country’s monument landscape. Each dot in An American Reflection represents a conventional monument contained within the Audit (48,178 in total). Together, these monuments are depicted as a massive constellation of stars, guiding us in decoding monumental meanings and myths. An American Reflection reveals this country’s monuments as an interconnected collection of public symbols rather than as solitary landmarks that, when taken together, disproportionately elevate the Lost Cause above Emancipation and Civil Rights more broadly. As Monument Lab reminds, “There is still work to be done together—to engage with monumental erasures and lies, and move toward a monument landscape that better acknowledges a fuller history of our country.” MONUMENTS is on view October 23, 2025 - May 3, 2026.
Image Credit: Still from An American Reflection, site-specific video installation, 2025, MONUMENTS at MOCA and The Brick.