Art historian Tanja Schult contributes to a publication on overthrown monuments and the diversity of monument culture today.
Protest at Ballhausplatz in Vienna at Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz von Olaf Nicolai, 2014.
The text is published in the journal Denkmalsturz und Diversität der Denkmallandschaft.
This article is an invitation to think together about what was long considered irreconcilable: democracy and monuments. It shows that “monuments in democracies” are not to be equated with “democratic monuments.” In today’s democracies, we must deal with monuments that we have inherited and that are often fundamentally opposed to our current democratic values. But what kind of monuments do democratic societies need? Through references both to history and to developments in monument creation during the last 40 years, we can see how much the genre has been revitalized and, yes, democratized.
Tanja Schult. Photo: Johanna Säll / Stockholm University
Tanja Schult is Associate professor and senior lecturer of Art History at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics. Her research focuses on Holocaust memory, on how monuments renegotiate questions of identity and participation, and how art’s efficacy can be captured through audience reception.
