The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library Presents Erin L. Thompson - Smashing Statues
Monday, Apr 04, 2022 7:00 PM
Location:
The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library
441 John Lewis Freedom Parkway, NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30307
A leading expert on the past, present, and future of public monuments in America.
The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and A Cappella Books welcome author and art historian Erin L. Thompson for a discussion on her book, “Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments,” on Monday, April 4, 2022 at 7 PM.
This event is free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the venue. Masks are required.
About the Book
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 flashpoints, 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?
About the Author
Erin L. Thompson, who holds a PhD and a JD, is a professor of art crime at the City University of New York. She is the author of ”Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments” and ”Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present,” and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Smithsonian magazine, and Art in America. She lives in New York.
