New York Times: On Our National Mall, New Monuments Tell New Stories

New York Times / by Blake Gopnik / Published August 17, 2023

In the shadow of the Washington Monument, six temporary installations tease out who and what should be commemorated, and how art can help us remember.

What I found compelling about the whole project is the way a work might succeed on one dimension (maybe by undermining traditional, Guy-on-a-Horse ideas about monumentality) in the very act of failing on another (say, to achieve the visceral power of an old-fashioned monument). These impossible tensions between success and failure may simply be unavoidable in anything called a “public monument.”

That gives “Pulling Together,” as a whole, the flexible meaning we want from good art.