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Statues in Social Context
In 2018, Fabric[K] Design principal Marques King sat down with fellow designers and educators, Ken Filler and Austin Raimond, for a recording of “The Table Session” Podcast. The episode explores the layers of a touchy socio-political topic - civic statues - specifically in the context of the America Capital of Washington, D.C. What’s interesting is the commentary on how statues and who they memorialize, influence the creation of quality public space and who subliminally has access to it. Here’s an excerpt from the episode’s abstract…
“Out of the 150 “statues” or “monuments” surveyed in Washington DC for this study, almost 100 are of prominent white men. Apart from the Mary Macleod Bethune statue erected in 1974, which could be classified as a true anomaly in this analysis’ spectrum, there was no true monument dedicated to a prominent black individual until Martin Luther King Jr. finally got his long overdue memorial in 2011 (43 years after his death!). Even though MLK gained his seat at the table with Lincoln and Jefferson on the National Mall, one could still argue that his statue is positioned in such a way that does not command public space, but is rather a “destination” that one must seek out...
...Since 1876 (12 years after his death), Major General McPherson (McPherson Square) has projected an image of strength and heritage; an image that commands one of the largest public nodes of the nation’s capital. A cornerstone of Washington’s urban identity, he and other union generals organize the entire urban fabric of downtown. On the contrary, only during the Obama presidency, were statues of black men erected in Washington DC. Carter G. Woodson, received his commemorative monument in 2014 (65 years after his death) in a triangle in a historically black neighborhood.”
A self surveyed map of 150 statues and monuments in Washington, D.C.. It is worth noting that most Persons of Color living in the city do so primairly in the ‘deep’ Northwest & Southwest quadrants - where there are viturally no monuments and lack-luster public spaces. Image composed by Ken Filler & Austin Raimond from’The Table Session’ Podcast.