Who Decides What We Remember? Monuments and Public Space

How do monuments shape our collective memory — and who decides which histories endure? This conversation explores how race, culture, and power are inscribed in the physical spaces of American life. From Jim Crow–era facilities to Rosa Parks’s act of defiance, the built environment reflects our nation’s ongoing struggles with equality and justice. Over the past decade, public spaces have become sites of reckoning — from contested monuments to civic redesign. Artists and civic leaders discuss how to reclaim, reimagine, and reinterpret shared spaces to better represent the truth of our democracy.