Research project Rethink and Reload – Monuments in 21st Century Democracies

Art historian Tanja Schult contributes to a publication on overthrown monuments and the diversity of monument culture today.

Tanja Schult and Tim Cole will give an open guest lecture at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City 10 October.

A public kickoff-seminar for the research project The Everyday Life of Urban Monuments was held at the University of Copenhagen 7 May. There were app. 35 participants, most from Danish institutions, but also from Sweden, UK and the Netherlands. Participants from art history, urban history, museology, cultural heritage institutions, archives, landscape architecture and preservation.

Together with partners from Bristol, Amsterdam, Wroclaw, Stockholm and Copenhagen the Museum of Copenhagen are currently hosting an explorative network on The Everyday Life of Urban Monuments from 2024 to 2026.

From 2024 to 2026 the Museum of Copenhagen heads the explorative research network The Everyday Life of Urban Monuments that recently received app. 550.000 DKK in funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The network aim to explore and develop new methods and theoretical perspectives on the study of urban monuments. The core group consists of leading scholars and cultural heritage professionals from Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Bristol, Wroclaw and Copenhagen (see list below), but wishes to include other scholars and curators interested in the field through invitations and open calls. The network is coordinated by Jakob Ingemann Parby, senior researcher at the Museum of Copenhagen and Tanja Schult, associate professor at Stockholm University and aims at developing research environments and stimulate studies of the relationship between cities, citizens and monumental practices, including the development of research partnerships and fundraising for one or more larger joint research projects. The project activities include a kickoff-seminar in Copenhagen in May 2024 and a concluding conference in the fall of 2026 plus three thematic workshops: Monumental typologies and biographies Ignition and care: Monuments in jeopardy Commemoration and Citizenship: Outreach and participation The location, dates and format of these workshops will be announced later. Results from the projects will be published in Journal of Urban History/Memory Studies Journal, Sculpture Journal og Frieze/Public Art Dialogue as well as in an anthology gathering the results of the concluding conference in 2026. Further info: Jakob Ingemann Parby, Museum of Copenhagen, jakobp@kk.dk Project description Network Everyday Monuments (205 Kb) The Everyday Life of Urban Monuments website

On 29th and 30th June, an international and interdisciplinary conference on the topic of Monuments in 21st Century Democracies will be held at the Zitadelle Spandau in Berlin. It is connected to an interdisciplinary research project in Art history and Historical geography at Stockholm University and University of Bristol. Around the world, the fall of monuments has become a controversial phenomenon. Alongside toppling statues, formerly marginalized groups are demanding visibility in public space also with the help of monuments, statues and memorials which for a long time were almost considered obsolete. The international symposium Rethink and Reload is dedicated to the multifaceted culture of monuments in contemporary democracies. It considers the overthrow and new settings and genres of monuments as two inseparable sides of one development: the effort to make our increasingly diverse democracies more democratic. Conference language : English Location : Zitadelle Spandau, Am Juliusturm 64, 13599 Berlin (Germany) Date : 29–30 June, 2023 Registration anmeldung@zitadelle-berlin.de The participation is free of charge. Find the complete program here Scholars, preservationists, artists, and activists from various European countries and the United States will discuss the potential for democratic societies in the controversies currently being played out at monuments. Re-dedications, temporary interventions, guerrilla and counter-monuments, new commissions, and monument demolitions are more than symbolic acts. They shape reality and thus the possibility of social representation and participation. In the controversy around monuments, fundamental questions are negotiated about how to remember and live in a society that is striving for greater equality and equity. Which themes are addressed? How will this be formally arranged? Who will be involved in the process? What is at stake? What can be gained? What new possibilities are there for dealing with the monument genre, often conceived as static or outdated and even irrelevant? With lectures, discussions and film screenings, this symposium is aimed equally at both experts and the interested public. The Zitadelle Berlin-Spandau is a suitable setting for this conference. With the exhibition Unveiled. Berlin and its Monuments, the museum has become a centre for scientific, artistic and cultural-political discussions of problematic monuments. Especially since 2020 – the year of the worldwide monument overthrows of colonial masters and slaveholders – it has come into international focus. So far, it is unique in the world for its museological approach to so-called toxic commemoration culture. Instead of tabula rasa, museum display ensures continuity, but instead of continued discrimination in public space and further consolidation of long-outdated power relations, it makes appropriate contextualization and mediation possible. But the Citadel wants more! It wants to develop into a place of frequent, interdisciplinary and international exchange. The cooperation with the German-Swedish scientist Dr Tanja Schult marks the beginning of this process. Together with Dr Urte Evert (Director of Zitadelle Spandau), Tanja Schult has organized the symposium Rethink and Reload. It is also the first output of the research project “Rethink and Reload – Monuments in 21st Century Democracies between Iconoclasm and Revival”, funded by the Swedish Research Council, which Tanja Schult is conducting together with Professor Tim Cole (Bristol). Under the keywords Monuments’ Possibilities, Monuments in Practice and Monuments in Use , international scholars from various fields will discuss the potential of monuments in democracy in various panels – among them the philosopher Marie-Luisa Frick (Universität Innsbruck), author of e.g. Zivilisiert streiten. Zur Ethik der politischen Gegnerschaft (2017), Paul Farber, director of Monument LAB in Philadelphia, and Erin Thompson, professor of art crime at the City University of New York and the author of Smashing Statues. The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments (2022) as well as artists and practitioners. Film screenings and tours through the exhibition will expand the discussion and complement the conference program.