Monument Lab-Power and Participation in Public Art with Paul Farber

Paul Farber is Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based organization working with artists, students, educators, activists, municipal agencies, and cultural institutions to facilitate critical conversations around the past, present, and future of monuments, approaches to public engagement, and collective memory. He also serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania.

A highly collaborative pilot project between Monument Lab and UMMA will encompass curatorial research around the intersection of Michigan history, public art, and monuments, and will culminate in an artist commission for 2023 that explores the history of UMMA’s Alumni Memorial Hall as a monument. Farber and the team at Monument Lab were the inaugural grantees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 Million initiative to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces,” including Monument Lab’s National Monument Audit and the opening of research field offices throughout the United States. Farber has co-curated Monument Lab projects including its original Philadelphia City Hall discovery exhibition (Philadelphia, 2015), citywide public art and history exhibition (Philadelphia, 2017), A Call to Peace (Military Park Newark, 2019), Public Iconographies (Pulitzer Foundation, 2019-2020), and Staying Power (Village of Arts and Humanities, 2021).

Presented in partnership with The University of Michigan Museum of Art, with additional support from U‑M’s Democracy & Debate 2022 – 23 and U‑M Arts Initiative.