On December 4, 2018, Rutgers University-Newark hosted a panel discussion that reflected on the work of Washington’s Next! and broader issues related to race and public memory, post-Charlottesville.
"Monumental Racists: A Conversation about Challenging, Reframing, and Removing Statues” featured scholars, curators, activists, policy makers, and artists. It opened with a brief slideshow of Washington’s Next! presented by Sydney Johnson, former curator of the Missouri State Museum, and current PhD student in the American Studies program at Rutgers-Newark. This was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Dr. Aleia M. Brown, co-founder of the twitter conversations #MuseumRespondToFerguson and #BlkTwitterstorians, and Assistant Director of African American History, Culture and Digital Humanities at the University of Maryland. The panelists were:
Dr. Jack Tchen, Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and the Humanities at Rutgers-Newark, co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America, and member of the NYC Mayor’s Monuments Commission
Marisa Williamson, M.F.A., video, performance, and installation artist (including many works about Sally Hemings), and Assistant Professor of Foundations at the Hartford Art School
Dr. Lyra D. Monteiro, Assistant Professor of History and American Studies, Affiliate Faculty in African-American and African Studies at Rutgers-Newark, and Director and Co-Founder of The Museum On Site
“Monumental Racists” was generously sponsored by the Department of History and the Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.
The flyer for the event is below, as is the video recorded that evening (broken into four sections).
Video of the “Monumental Racists” panel is available below, and on the YouTube channel of The Museum On Site.