National Monument Audit

The National Monument Audit (2021), produced by Monument Lab in partnership with The Mellon Foundation, assesses the monument landscape across the United States. Monument Lab’s research team spent a year scouring almost a half million historic records created and maintained by federal, state, local, tribal, institutional, and publicly assembled sources. For our deepest investigations, we focused on a study set of approximately 50,000 conventional monuments representing data collected from every US state and territory.

The National Monument Audit allows us to better understand the dynamics and trends that have shaped our monument landscape, to pose questions about common knowledge about monuments, and to debunk falsehoods and misperceptions within public memory. The National Monument Audit is meant to inform Mellon’s landmark Monuments Project, designed to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces and ensure that future generations inherit a commemorative landscape that venerates and reflects the vast, rich complexity of the American story.”

Edited by Paul M. Farber, Sue Mobley, and Laurie Allen 

Foreword by Elizabeth Alexander

The National Monument Audit is produced with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Product Details:

• Soft cover

• 42 pages

• 8.5 x 11 inches
  
  

Monument Lab is a nonprofit public art, history, and design studio based in Philadelphia. We are dedicated to advancing justice by reimagining monuments as places for belonging, learning, and healing.For more information and to support, visit MonumentLab.com.