By Thomas J. Brown (NHC Fellow, 2015–16) This sweeping new assessment of Civil War monuments unveiled in the United States between the 1860s and 1930s argues that they were pivotal to a national embrace of military values. Americans' wariness of standing armies limited construction of war memorials in the early republic, Thomas J. Brown explains, … Continued
By William Craft Brumfield (NHC Fellow, 1992–93) The twentieth century in Russia has been a cataclysm of rare proportions, as war, revolution, famine, and massive political terror tested the limits of human endurance. The results of this assault on Russian culture are particularly evident in ruined architectural monuments, some of which are little known even … Continued
Edited by J. R. Green (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) and Axel Seeberg
By Annabel Jane Wharton (NHC Fellow, 1985–86; 2002–03; 2016–17) Refiguring the Post-Classical City examines the 'Christianisation' of four important Mediterranean centers at critical moments in a cultural paradigm shift, from classical to post-classical, that occurred from the third to sixth century. Tracing the partial displacement of traditional Greco-Roman cultural codes by an alternative set of … Continued
By Daniel W. Patterson (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) A thousand unique gravestones cluster around old Presbyterian churches in the piedmont of the two Carolinas and in central Pennsylvania. Most are the vulnerable legacy of three generations of the Bigham family, Scotch Irish stonecutters whose workshop near Charlotte created the earliest surviving art of British settlers in … Continued
Why would someone bring a can of beer to a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.? Why would someone project a photograph of Breonna Taylor, a black health care worker killed in her sleep during a global pandemic, onto the base of a memorial to Robert E. Lee? The short answer to these … Continued
Not only did the Civil War inspire some of the nation’s best painters, sculptors, photographers, and illustrators, it also changed the face of town and countryside as monuments to soldiers and statesmen of the era spread across the landscape. How did artists come to grips with the new realities of warfare and the unprecedented scale … Continued
The Civil War caused Americans to re-imagine themselves and their nation. Countrymen once again, however uneasily, Northerners, Southerners, and growing populations in the West had to figure out the meaning of the War and the meaning of citizenship in a nation that now included four million new citizens who had once been enslaved. Public monuments … Continued
Confederate monuments are the most common form of monumental public art in the former states of the Confederacy and Kentucky. These monuments are one of the most conspicuous and contested markers of regional identity. Exploring how the monuments were funded, created and dedicated reveals important insights into how power, privilege, and identity inform the history … Continued
This webinar introduces historical architecture as an important—if fragile—record of past societies. Particularly in global regions where current political realities create fear, misunderstanding, and continuing conflict, surviving buildings serve as powerful markers of their inhabitants’ negotiations and co-existence. Historical structures are, in fact, indelible reminders that “the past is…not even past yet.”