The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation earlier this week announced its latest plans regarding its Monuments Project, intended to “transform the nation’s commemorative landscape” by 2025. The five-year $250 million grant initiative funds public artworks across the United States that “more completely and accurately represent the multiplicity and complexity of American stories,” according to a foundation press release. The organization will distribute nine Monuments Project grants this summer to support public art projects in nine cities. Asheville, North Carolina; Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Providence, Rhode Island, and San Francisco will split $25 million.
The new round of grants brings the total funds awarded thus far to about $152 million, and the number of grantees to date to 67. Among the projects being undertaken by the abovenamed cities are Boston’s Un-monument | Re-monument | De-Monument: Transforming Boston, which will promote conversations and new narratives around the city’s extant monuments through temporary commemorative art installations and related free programming; and the construction in Los Angeles of a new memorial to the victims of the 1871 Chinese Massacre. Columbus and Portland will use the money to resituate or dispose of recently removed monuments, while Denver and San Francisco will use it to fund audits of their existing monuments.
“Through the monuments and memorials that mark them, our civic spaces are where many of us first learn about the American Story,” said Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander in a statement. “These grants strengthen new possibilities for commemoration in American cities so we can better understand that story and the history that informs it, and so we can celebrate the collective achievements and extraordinary acts these new monuments and memorials will honor in civic spaces across the country.”