Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments - Couverture souple

Thompson, Erin L.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1324050497 ISBN 13 : 9781324050490

Editeur : WW Norton & Co, 2023

Synopsis

An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? Which ones should stay up and which should come down? Who should make these decisions, and how?

Erin L. Thompson, the country’s leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues involved in such battles, brings much-needed clarity in Smashing Statues. She lays bare the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, from the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom that tops the United States Capitol, to the fervent Klansman fired from sculpting the world’s largest Confederate monument―who went on to carve Mount Rushmore. And she explores the surprising motivations behind contemporary flash-points, including the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol, the question of who should be represented on the Women’s Rights Pioneers Monument in Central Park, and the decision by a museum of African American culture to display a Confederate monument removed from a public park.

Written with great verve and informed by a keen sense of American history, Smashing Statues gives readers the context they need to consider the fundamental questions for rebuilding not only our public landscape but our nation as a whole: Whose voices must be heard, and whose pain must remain private?

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Erin L. Thompson is a professor of art crime at the City University of New York and the author of Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Smithsonian Magazine. She lives in New York.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: WW Norton & Co
• Date d'édition: 2023
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1324050497
• ISBN 13: 9781324050490
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 288
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible