 Hello, everyone. Welcome to our next to last lecture. I can't believe it. How the fall is racing by. Wanted to ask for your help for a moment, if I might. We are looking for someone to help us with database management. If you or someone you know, a neighbor, a friend, a family member, could help us with database management. And basically what that is is keeping records of all the members in the association, sending out emails. We would help and train whoever that is. So if you have ideas or someone might have questions about it, call me. Thank you so much. So now I'd like to ask Michael or landscape of our program committee to please introduce today's speaker, Michael. Thank you Carol and hello everyone. Today we welcome Kelly Helm Stuttler DDO, Professor of Art History and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Vermont. Professor Helm Stuttler DDO earned her master's and PhD degrees in art history at Rutgers State University of New Jersey. The main academic focus is on Italian and Spanish sculpture of the 16th and 17th centuries. Earlier this week, in fact, she hosted and co-organized a major international conference on Italian Renaissance sculpture here at UVM. Her scholarly interests include Michelangelo, portrait medals and female power, artists, friendships in Renaissance Europe, museum studies and art and its destruction. She has involved many UVM students in community-based arts projects, research and exhibits on themes such as street art, activism and art, gender and sexuality in art, and the history of Confederate monuments. She's published many well-received articles, essays and books, and guest lectured at museums and universities in Europe, Canada and the US. Professor Helm, the Prado in Madrid, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and recently at her own alma mater, Rutgers. Professor Helm Stuttler DDO's research has earned fellowships from various sources, including the Ministry of Arts and Culture of Spain, the Medici Archive Project, and the ITATI, Harvard University's Center for Italian Renaissance Studies near Florence. She's been honored with the Krebsch-Maurice Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at UVM. Kelly and her family moved to Vermont 19 years ago after living in Italy. We currently have six animals, all of whom are named for Italian artists. Today, Kelly Helm Stuttler DDO will speak on monuments, memory and loss in the American cityscape. Thank you and welcome. Thank you so much for that wonderful and generous and kind introduction. That was lovely. I feel quite humbled by it. And I'm grateful to be invited here to be a part of this group and share some of my research and thoughts about what is going on with monuments in the United States, which has been so much in the news. And so I'm grateful for this opportunity and want to thank Michael in particular for reaching out to me and just being such a lovely host, even in this virtual world. So thank you for that. I will jump right in to my talk and then have time at the end for questions, which I think are through the chat box. You probably all know the drill better than I do. As Michael mentioned, I have been working on Italian Renaissance sculpture in particular, which is what I got my specialization in at Rutgers and that is what my primary scholarly focus is but I have sort of naturally gravitated to thinking about the role of sculpture in the United States. And I think I, I come at that natural so naturally because of two perspectives. One is my training in Italian Renaissance sculpture where public sculpture was of enormous importance as a means of communication. And then from my being born and raised in the state that has the most Confederate monuments in the United States, the state of Virginia. So I come at it, as I say from from these two perspectives and want to share with you some of my thoughts as public sculpture in the US has become so widely discussed. And so widely targeted by protesters and by people on the other side of the protests that are concerned about the preservation of what they see that monument standing for. And so, again, I appreciate your time today and and bear with me as I very passionately talk about these sculptures that I find so fascinating. So I'm going to start with Italy, which is where, for me, public sculpture really gets exciting but it's also true that there are important examples of public sculpture from the very beginnings of the history of art. I certainly think about ancient Mesopotamian culture, but, you know, other examples and they're very well may have been public monuments even in the prehistoric era that were really meant to do the same things we see monuments doing today, which is to communicate with a set of ideals that a certain group of people holds and wants to sort of make public be shared in a public space to be engaged with or seen as a model of behavior, which is often how we see monuments performing in public spaces. The instances where and many instances, frankly, where we see that, you know, their situation in a public space becomes problematic over time or becomes, you know, no longer represents the value sets of the people that are engaging in it in their daily lives. And I certainly think this example is a great example of that. This is a monument to Ferdinando I di Medici, the Medici family, you know, the sort of source of money and patronage and all that makes the Italian Renaissance so exciting in Florence. And Ferdinando I di Medici was engaged in these new means of trade and transportation and exchange in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and that included the slave trade. And he had Giovanni Bandini and Pietro Tacca create this monument to honor his role in this, which he saw as being, you know, an important role in maintaining or even elevating the status of the port of Livorno in particular which was the major port for Tuscany, where the Medici's rain from. And so this monument shows us Ferdinando standing very proudly in white marble, and then around the base of this pedestal are these images of slaves and we know their slaves. And in fact have even been identified as individuals in some cases, at least hypothesized, but we know their slaves because of the way that they're positioned in these crouching poses, the fact that they are almost completely nude, and that they are chained to the pedestal. And it's quite clear that we are meant to understand them as slaves and subservient to Ferdinando who stand so proudly above them. And they are done not in the white marble that Ferdinando's monument statue is done in but in bronze, which adds to this coloristic effect of the monument and certainly is also meant to help us identify that these are men that are coming from Africa. Sorry, hit the wrong button. And even in the 17th hundreds and certainly as we get into the 1800s. I think that people saw this monument and found it to be perfectly acceptable. It was seen in ways that I think are not dissimilar from how some people see this monument today. It's a record of one of Napoleon's generals as they, you know are going through Italy, and engaging with in somewhat in sometimes very problematic ways like looting with the art in Italy and Napoleon's general comes across this monument in in Levorno that we just looked at, and really it's iconography, how it's composed what kind of meanings are meant to be taken from looking at it. And it says that it's a very distressing spectacle to see this statue as you come on to the port, and it invokes feelings of pain scoring contempt and hatred, which as he says should should disturb every sensible soul that approaches it. And he suggest that instead of this statue, there should be a statue of Liberty that is that substitutes this and that we should break the chains of the four slaves and smashes with a pick the head of Ferdinando and spread it out on the ground. So really vitriolic reaction to the iconography of this statue, even in this period when certainly the slave trade certainly existed. So that that's sort of one perspective that I come with is looking at you know renaissance statues and the way that we see them today and you know the talk as monument of Ferdinando the first is unusual and how starkly that iconography of slavery, and white dominance is is communicated but it's not an anomaly we see a similar sorts of images and paintings and other sorts of sculptures but it's placement in the public square and leave or no is pretty exceptional. And important to point out that today leave or no is quite a diverse city, and there are, there's quite a population there of Italian Africans or a newly migrated Africans that live in that city and interact with that sculpture and have, you know, understandably ask that something be done with it and have it removed from the public square. And because it's an important renaissance statue, there's been a lot of mixed reactions to that suggestion. So that's one aspect that informs how I look at the American cityscape the other is my being born and raised in Martinsville, Virginia. Martinsville is a very small town in the southwest corner of the state. Our house was five miles from the Virginia, North Carolina line, and we were about three hours east of the Tennessee border so that kind of orient to you geographically. It was, and still is a town that has a lot of wealthy people in it, white wealthy people who benefited from the furniture industry and textile industry. But it also has a very large population of poor black people, and there, the town remains quite segregated in terms of the city and where people reside in what the populations of the school look like, and so forth. And in that city with walking distance of my house it was a very small town but walking distance of my house in the downtown area was the courthouse and it was the courthouse until, I think maybe a decade ago so until very recent history. And this was the courthouse where, you know, the only courthouse in our city and where all kinds of trials as you might imagine, took place. The front of this courthouse in 1901 was added a Confederate monument and that was added by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Mildred Lee branch of the Daughters of the Confederacy, which was, and still is an active group, a social and politically active, active group, who really wanted to sort of frame the history of what happened during the Civil War in terms that defended the south and the south stance as, you know, a place where these genteel generals and brave soldiers fought against the tyranny of the Union. In that framing of that discourse and tying into that other untruths about how the Civil War was actually not about slavery, about how the slaves were actually happy and creating this sort of myth that is called the lost cause, was propagated through their work and still is both through public monuments like this one in Martinsville, but also through textbooks and, you know, it's quite a marketing campaign. And they edited the history and social studies textbooks that were used in my state, including the ones I learned from until quite recently, and made sure that this myth of the lost cause is, is what we were taught. And frankly, I never had a teacher that went against that way of describing what happened during the Civil War and very much grew up. And because of that with the mindset that Robert E. Lee and others like him were the kind of ideal southern gentlemen, never sort of questioning what actually happened what it was really about and what these men actually stood for. These monuments that were placed around by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in conjunction with the Ku Klux Klan which they very much supported financially, were really meant to endorse and reinforce these ideals of the lost cause. In Martinsville, you know, we're looking at another image here of that St. Courthouse with the monument placed in front of it. And in this image you can see that to the right of the courthouse as we're facing it. There are but a lot of business fronts will store fronts and it that is still the case that is sort of the marker of the beginning of the business part of downtown. And we have lots of nice stores and department stores and other things that were during the period of segregation only intended for white folks to shop in and, you know, even when I was growing up you would not see black people in these stores for the most part so that kind of segregation, certainly held on long past the end of segregation. On the left side of the image and left side of the courthouse was the area that began the black part of town. And this was a very vibrant cultural center for black culture in our town and had really been settled by black people right at the end of the Civil War, once they were freed. But it was an area that as is true in many places across the south or elsewhere that were affected by segregation the black schools and you know any sort of black community support was really very paltry compared to what the white part of town enjoyed. But I bring all of this up because I see the placement of that Confederate monument right at the crossroads of the white and the black parts of my hometown as being really significant it maps exactly where those delineations are but it also is meant to reinforce that our side of town very much supported the efforts of the Confederate soldiers and we still very much hold them up as a model of the way we should behave and that we laud their efforts in protecting southern heritage. I think it's you know particularly significant that it's in front of a courthouse and you can, I think easily imagine and extrapolate how a black person would feel as they were going to face trial in this space where outside there is a monument that is proclaiming that slavery was not an issue, not a problem and that you know the power of the white people in town and those belief systems are what should be remembered. But Virginia, as I said earlier, is filled with Confederate monuments but they are also found all over the place, which I think is telling in terms of what their meaning is. There are 1,568 Confederate monuments in 12 southern states. They are also in town squares courthouse lawns and in every state capital building in the south. A thousand of them were placed between 1890 and 1950 so well after the end of the Civil War. They are not monuments that would be more the norm which are erected right at the end of a war in celebration of victory. These are monuments that are actually sort of raising up the defeated and the people that were found to be treasonous in this conflict with the Union. So that those years of course are important 1890 to 1950 and are aligned with efforts for greater freedoms for black people in our country, greater integration, for example, with Brown versus Board of Education. You know, as that becomes law, we see schools being named after Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee, we see monuments going up to Lee and other Confederate monuments on school grounds, clearly as a means to send a message of defiance against this integration of the schools and to serve as a reminder both to the white people and the black people that were attending those schools about who's in charge. There are 27 Confederate monuments in Texas, there are 16 more added across the south after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act so we can really align these with these changes in protections and rights for black people in our country. But what I think is so extraordinary and so telling is that we see Confederate monuments being placed in areas that have the opposite to do with the Confederacy places like Maine, Oregon, New York, Montana places that that you know clearly had had no importance or any role in terms of the Confederacy so quite extraordinary, and I think says a lot about what the true meaning of these sorts of sculptures are. The Southern Poverty Law Center has tracked this overlap of important law cases or other moments in American history with the erection of monuments or naming of schools, courthouses and so forth, after the Confederate soldiers generals in particular. And you can see that here that the key years really are, you know, especially around 1890, 1896 you have Plessy versus Ferguson and you know you've got the clan that reemerges you've got the Tulsa race rights it's like every time, you know there is some sort of movement. Towards greater civil rights there's an uptick in both monuments and naming but also in things like the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan the Tulsa race rights and so forth so you see this sort of ebb and flow another moment is in 1954 with Brown versus Board of Education. And this uptick after that, you know, as the civil rights movement is really starting to get some traction. We see a lot of monuments being placed yet again in these very important sites of city squares in front of town halls in front of courtyards and for schools. So it is the United Daughters of the Confederacy that are kind of at the heart of this monument mania that happens starting in the 1890s. They are still very much identify as a group that is meant to protect and honor the memory of, as they say honoring the memory of their Confederate ancestors protecting preserving and marking the places made historic by Confederate Valor. Collecting and preserving the material for a truthful history of the war between the states. This is, you know, their, their version of truth, of course this is the truth of, as they see it of, you know, what, what is actually the myth of the lost cause but you know they made this statement in 2018 it's not like this is what they said in 1890. So that it's very much still a part of their mission. And even as we start to see monuments that they raised fall down, they are reiterating the values that they've always held as central. One key place where the United Daughters of the Confederacy made their mark was on Monument Avenue and Richmond, Virginia, which I am sure you all have seen in the news and Richmond was three hours north of me growing up and was one of our big cities we would go to visit and I very much remember driving down Monument Avenue and just how impressive this series of sculptures was. Again, certainly not questioning who they were why they were there or any of that but being certainly impressed by the beauty of the landscape design and the placement of these statues it's quite an impressive place to see Monument Avenue as a place where exclusively white people could own property this was written into the contracts when people would buy houses in this area that only be to white people. And then the landscape design is meant to reinforce that with the statues of the Confederate generals that marked, you know, down the median as you were going through this beautiful tree lined avenue and Monument Avenue is, you know, in the most beautiful houses in Richmond align each side of it so it is a place that very much centers the the important presence of white people and and the benefits they enjoy in the city of Richmond Richmond is a very diverse city. Certainly the representation of all these white people concentrated in Monument Avenue does not reflect the city population of Richmond. And that was true even when Monument Avenue was made but it was part of that effort to maintain, you know, these boundaries in the cityscape between where the white areas were and where the black areas were. One of the monuments on Monument Avenue is what was the monument of Robert E. Lee, which was done by Anthony Mercier, and this was a sculpture that was really meant to be the center point of the Monument Avenue sculpture series. Robert E. Lee certainly the most revered of those Confederate generals and and held up as a real model of of Southern manhood in important ways. And believe me that there are still many many people in the south that feel exactly that way about Robert E. Lee and there's been a great deal of pushback. Against the calls for having the monument removed. And these calls for having, you know, questioning the presence of the monument actually began as soon as the monument arrived in Richmond and was erected on Monument Avenue. On May 31 1890 in the Richmond planet, which was a black run newspaper. One writer really questioned what it means to have this monument be placed in the center of Richmond. And reminds the reader that Richmond the capital of the late Confederacy has been decorated with emblems of the lost cause when the boxes containing the bronze monument of General Robert E. Lee were removed from the cars. No flags of the Union ornamented the procession only the stars and bars the Confederate flag could be seen the rebel yell under the folds of the flag of succession which way proudly after 25 years rent the air. But what does this display of Confederate emblems mean what does it serve to teach the rising generations of the south. Why this placing of Lee on equality with Washington Jackson with Marion and Stuart with light horse Harry of other days. There's lacking and all this display the proper appreciation of the Union. There's evidence that the loyalty oft expressed penetrates no deeper than the service. So questioning, you know, how can we say that we are now part of the Union, while also raising up the symbols that are obviously in contrast to that. On the other hand, a white man archer Anderson a Richmond industrialist and former member of the Confederate Army, said of the Robert E. Lee right as it was being raised, it will teach generations yet unborn and stand as the embodiment of a brave and virtuous people's ideal leader. So he was very clear about what the meaning of this monument was meant to be for those in Richmond. After much pushback and discussion about what should be done with this highly problematic monument and the other monuments on Monument Avenue. Robert E. Lee monument was removed on September 8. So just a little bit over a month ago. In these two images document that but it was a very long and difficult path to get to this point. The other monuments of Confederate generals had been removed, but not this one and and again since Robert E. Lee. So I mean to really embody the values of the South the Southern heritage and those ideals of manhood. There was a lot of concern pushback and people crying out that we were erasing history with the removal of this monument. And it's just me to ask you know who's history. Are we erasing when monuments like this are removed. It is not the history of the realities of what happened in Virginia and elsewhere during these Jim Crow years, it's not the reality of the very separation of black people into accepted white culture in the south. And, you know what it erases is in my opinion but I'm certainly not alone in this is this anomaly of having monuments of the defeated. And so centered as important public monuments in the city of especially such a diverse place where, you know, instead, we should be valuing and setting up to afford values and models of morality if that's what monuments should serve. And surely we need to move on from these monuments that raise up people who absolutely fought for maintaining southern traditions, including the institution of slavery. Ralph North on the governor of Virginia and said, on the occasion of the removal of the monument the public monuments reflect the story we choose to tell about who we are as a people. We need to display history is history and use the public memorials to honor the full and inclusive truth of who we are today, and in the future. And I think that's really what's. It's an important statement. As we think about other monuments that are around the country and what we should do with them and the answer is not always to remove them and certainly it's not always to destroy them. We do need to have some dialogues around what should happen with the monuments that we decorate our city escapes with the monument lab, a nonprofit public art and history lab in Philadelphia has been tracking and doing some data analysis around public monuments in the United States, and they have raised visibility about what who it is that we have monuments of, and this is their top 50 people we have monuments to and the United States. And, you know, some of them are problematic people I think by, by most measures, including at number six Robert E. Lee, and but there's also Stonewall Jackson, and at number 12 number 13 Jefferson Davis. There are other people that are not Confederate soldiers but people that certainly did damage to many of the native peoples in the United States and to other people of color, including who need to say that who was a missionary in California I'll talk about briefly in just a moment Christopher Columbus is another Andrew Jackson, and you know I think Nathan Bedford forest at number 44 that really gave a restart to the Ku Klux Klan. There are a bunch of really problematic people that we still decorate our public spaces with in the United States. We need to consider what implications there are of that. Wikipedia, not always the source I rely on but has put a list together of the monuments that have been removed and I just wanted to share very quickly I don't know if you're able to see this though, you may not be able to so I will share this as a link. I don't want to look at it when you would like. And, but it is a list of all of the monuments that have been removed since 2020 and there are hundreds of monuments. In some ways that that causes some panic of, of folks who worry that we are causing that erasure of history or we're, you know, acting to quickly in thinking about who's in our public spaces. Some examples of monuments that have been removed include these by me, but oh Sarah or I mentioned just a moment ago. Sarah was a man from Spain who came to the United States to California specifically and created missions and enslaved the indigenous people of the area to work in the mission to build them and and service them and has been the target of a lot of protest and pushback among indigenous people in California and their allies. And so these statues have been removed prior to that they had certainly been vandalized, and these were not statues that were just in front of the missions which maybe one could argue is while public it's still, you know, a church and so part of private property on that regard, but some of them were in front of municipal buildings in front of tribunals where especially placed when indigenous rights were being ratified by the courts and so very much like the case of the Confederate monuments. We see the same kind of trajectory, looking at monuments of Sarah and my point is that it's not just the Confederate monuments that are problematic we have monuments across the country that are still very much lauding men who have very troubled histories and did damage to the people that they subjugated and in various ways. Christopher Columbus has also certainly been targeted recently. And, you know, there is the, the pushback that he caused, you know, a great deal of harm to Native Americans. And there's also a question of, you know, why he's lauded in the United States to begin with. And most of the monuments to Christopher Columbus were put up by the Italian American community, who was fighting against prejudice that they were experiencing. They kind of tried to tie their presence in America back to Christopher Columbus, obviously an Italian himself, and sort of create this ideal of, you know, Italians being at the very heart of the United States and its history and thereby, they should not be treated. You know, in some incredibly discriminatory ways about what places they could enter into what jobs they could get and so forth. So again, these are, you know, a question of who's in charge and who's making the monuments and what might they mean but this is sort of coming at it from another single of those who are feeling discriminated against erecting monuments to serve a different sort of purpose. So public monuments are of course complicated. While some monuments are fairly easy to remove others definitely are not. And these are two such examples from Mount Rushmore, which was a sacred land of the Lakota Sioux, or Stone Mountain in Georgia, which is inscribed with the Confederate generals. There had been Cherokee and Creek Federation land. And what what to do about monuments that that, you know, especially in the case I think of stone mountain that are of people I think we would more or less universally say need not be lauded anymore. And so with this monument when it is now part of the natural landscape in a really seemingly permanent way. Other monuments are problematic in other ways. This is a monument of Lincoln. This is called the Emancipation Monument in Washington DC. It is a monument where we see Lincoln standing with a slave at his feet crouching he's very much like the slave we saw in the Ferdinand of the first monument he is mostly nude, and is clearly meant to be as having been subjugated. Yes, in this case he's breaking these chains. Thanks to Lincoln which is clearly what the meaning is supposed to be. But it is a clearly, I can have graphically meant to suggest his lower status as compared to the stately manner that we we read Lincoln in the thing about this monument is that it was paid for by newly emancipated slaves. We read men and women and in fact it was a woman who was who donated part of her first paycheck as a free woman to start the fund that would then pay for this sculpture to be made. To see this monument today. It, you know, it wouldn't naturally strike us that this had been a monument paid for by black people that had been newly emancipated. Even at the time, it's iconography was questioned Frederick Douglass who had been present at the inauguration of the monument later wrote what I want to see before I dies a monument representing the Negro not count on the knees like a four footed animal, but erect on his feet like a man. And, you know, that sort of idea of this iconography and how contemporary black person reacted to it, certainly represents the pushback that this monument has gotten today. A recent public scholar contemporary of ours wrote it's not enough to argue that free blacks and formerly enslaved paid for the monuments not enough to argue that archer Alexander's image is the model for the kneeling figure he's the one who cast. I mean is the model for the black pan here. It's not enough to argue that Frederick Douglass delivered the dedicated to dedicatory speech and recognize the role of Lincoln and black freedom. It's not enough to argue that racist imagery has a lesson to teach us now it's not enough to simply reinterpret for a 21st century public we understand that the Freedman's Memorial should not remain in this space so still cause to have it removed. But even what last week, we had instances here in Vermont that should make us stop and question some of the monuments that we have around our state. And at the Bennington Museum on Indigenous Peoples Day, formerly Columbus Day. These, their protesters put up a sign in front of the museum that just says land back. And then we see the statue of Lincoln, a very odd statue. It's very odd if you don't mind me saying of a woman crashing at his feet under his cloak and then a new young boy, an odd odd in terms of its iconography to be sure, but it had been vandalized with red spray paint with the number 38. And this was a statement to remind people that Lincoln's past is not immaculate and that he had been responsible for 38 Dakota men being slaughtered. You know, in while he was, you know, doing the emancipation proclamation and other good things he was also not protecting indigenous peoples rights. So, for example, around Vermont, like this one, the some well the Champlain Monument made by Ferdinand Weber in 1967 on Alamot is troubling from my perspective, with the same kind of iconography used as we've seen elsewhere. The proud Samuel de Champlain. Sort of hanging over this, presumably abinac, he indigenous person that is in a canoe at his feet. But it follows the same iconographical tradition and certainly I don't think really shows the kind of on par collaborative relationship that Samuel de Champlain supposedly enjoyed with the abinac people if that history is a true one. So again, just to say this falls into the same sort of pattern of iconography that should make us stop and think about whether this is appropriate if it honors the abinac people in ways that they should be honored. And if these are values about who is in charge that we want to share with young people of today who are looking at and engaging with these sculptures so what are our options moving forward and I will wrap it up with this. I think super important I and I say this with some obvious bias is to bring art historians and historians in to think about and help work through what the history of monuments are to think about what could be lost or what could be gained adversely with their removal from public sites. We need to engage the public and the diverse voices of our cities to see how these sculptures may impact them how they read them what messages they think that they send and really think about you know what histories we're trying to preserve whose history that is who's who's in charge of telling that history. And then there are options of moving the monuments, adding other monuments to give them context, adding plaques to give them background and background and take them to museums or battleground cemeteries memorial parks or other sorts of other kinds of public sites that are not in the city square, reappropriate their imagery reuse them in some way and I can show you a quick example of that reactivate to street art and other contemporary artistic and then interventions, and sometimes just recycle them this is often maybe the best thing to do with some of those Confederate monuments that have actually no artistic value but we're mass produced. A couple of examples to show you what that could look like moment a park in Budapest, Hungary which is sort of a graveyard for communist monuments it didn't mean their destruction but you know certainly it takes them out of the cityscape it shows this change in government and values but it still preserves them and preserves that history in ways that I think are really compelling and interesting. There are ways within the museum, like Fred Wilson's mining the museum installation from 1992, where by showing empty spaces like these empty pedestals on the left hand of the image, we can try to give balance and at least recognize the absence in the histories that we're telling, even of great Marylanders like Harriet Tubman Frederick Douglass and Benjamin Banneker who were not recorded in the Maryland Historical Society, otherwise. Here's an example of a projection of on the Robert E. Lee monument before it was taken down. And then the decline and digital artist used the monument and it's pedestal as a sort of canvas for his projections and they would rotate different kinds of images that he would project their candy Wiley, a fabulous painter and in this case sculptor has done this monument for this monument is not far from Monument Avenue, and is meant to counteract some of the equestrian type of imagery that we see here with that we saw in the Confederate generals and instead show us a native, you know, we see a Native American or African man as he can be read in this setting instead. I mean, a new monument was put in place on September 22. So not even a month ago, no exactly month ago of Thomas J. Warren with this emancipation and freedom monument monuments like this that can give context can tell more of the historical truth. than what we saw in Virginia prior to this that was such a celebration of the lost cause. And I will end it with that I think we should allow some time for questions or comments if you have them and I will stop sharing my screen. Okay, thank you Kelly. We, we do have a few questions. Some people who are widely admired today might become controversial or polarizing in the future. Yes, new information about the person becomes available or if attitudes of the public just change. Should we just stop building statues of people all together. Well, I have to say I'm a big fan of abstract sculpture precisely for that reason, I think, you know, there are ways that abstract monuments can or might maybe better to say monuments that are more about a value than they are about an individual person maybe one way to get around that but I also think we just need to be willing to let go of monuments when they become passé for whatever reason we need to be willing to take them out of our public spaces and say you know it served its purpose. We now see that as a problem or this person is problematic. And that's okay and move on I don't think monuments are actually meant to be permanent. Okay, we have a question that asks, what are your thoughts regarding current comments and efforts about removing artworks that depict nudity in 3000 year old sculptures. I can't even say that I have heard that I can't even imagine a where that might be happening. You know, I think America is a very puritan place but I don't think that's the norm elsewhere in terms of of nudity. I certainly don't see any issue with showing the nude body in sculpture it has, it is part of a very, very, very long history of not only of art but of the human race and, in fact I see nudes as a way of making art more sort of accessible and reliable as they don't have on clothing that sort of puts them in a particular place and time, and they're more universal than that, and, you know, certainly I think the beauty of the, the human body is something to be celebrated I say that in part as a Renaissance sculpture scholar so full transparency on that front. Okay, another questioner asks, what is your opinion about tearing down monuments, if they offend certain segments of our society. I think that the diff the important point for me is where are those monuments when monuments are on public land, then they should reflect universally held values are any values held universally that may be a question for a philosopher to answer. I, you know, I think that if there are people that race significant questions with the presence of, you know, a sculpture that lots of particular person or value, we should take that to heart we should listen to that we should again be willing to take those sculptures of our public spaces, it doesn't mean they can't go in private spaces it doesn't mean they can't go in museums but the public landscape should be a place where we find a place to build community not to segment it through problematic monuments. Many Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War did not have slaves, they may not have been voluntarily enlisted into the into the war effort. Today, is it possible at all for their descendants and others to honor these people for their service and sacrifice. Oh boy. Well, I think, you know, again, I have to point out that the Confederacy lost the Confederacy was very short lived, and that the Confederacy was about pretty specific things that I think we should find abhorrent. So, I think, you know, I certainly have ancestors that fought in on the Confederate side. I certainly do not raise statues to them around my house or anywhere else I accept that that is a part of my family's history, it is a part of my family's history that you know I think if we dig into anybody's family's history we're going to find people that did things in that history that we're not proud of. We can honor military service but I think it's questionable to do so, depending on what people fought for. I mean I think families in Germany might be able to have some thoughts about that as well right would you similarly want to, you know, laud those people that fought in world war two that maybe didn't have an option or didn't see a way out of it. So I think we have to be very care I certainly honor our service men writ large but I think we also have to be willing to accept and when poor decisions were made that we no longer can celebrate. Thank you. I think that's all the questions we have for now but there certainly is a lot of food for thought for us to think about so I'll say thanks Kelly and pass it over to Carol. Oh yes thank you Kelly this was really interesting very very lot for us to think about and ponder. Thank you so much and see you all next week. Thank you Michael to buy everyone. All right thanks again.