Monuments as Tools for Democratic Artivism

Tanja Schult invites you to discuss her book manuscript Monuments as Tools for Democratic Artivism. The book will be published in 2026 with Brill-Böhlau.

Seminar

Date:

Tuesday 2 September 2025

Time:

15.00 – 17.00

Location:

The Library, 300, Manne Siegbahn buildings, Frescativägen 24E and online via Zoom

In the book, monuments are treated as materialised acts of cultural memory raised intentionally to influence society. The author asks: What do monuments do in democracies, what do those who create and commission them expect of these works, and how do people perceive and react towards them? Most importantly she is interested in exploring how monuments can be active tools to make democracies more democratic. For that endeavour she analyses three works at close range. The first case is Deine Stele (Your Stela), realised in 2017 by the radical artistic co-operative Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Centre for Political Beauty) in the small village of Bornhagen in Thuringia, Germany. The second is The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, in the United States, erected in 2018 by the NGO Equal Justice Initiative. The third is The Vienna Banquet of Human Rights and its Guardians by Paris-based, Belgian artist Françoise Schein that was erected in 2018 in the Austrian capital.

This seminar will be both online and IRL, held in English.

Participants of the seminar are asked to read at least one chapter, if possible more, of the manuscript draft. The author is looking forward to critical feedback. If you participate IRL: cake will await the critical readership!

If you want to participate in the seminar, please send an email to

tanja.schult@arthistory.su.se

You will receive a table of content form which you choose which chapter(s) you like to read.

Tanja Schult is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics. She teaches Visual and Material Culture. Tanja has published widely on the commemoration of painful pasts, in particular the Holocaust, and on monuments of all shapes, including invisible and controversial ones, and explored the roles, functions and shapes monuments have in democracy.