Madison Square Park Conservancy and the School of Visual Arts present Removing Public Art, a symposium where artists, cultural leaders, and scholars will lead a conversation on historic and contemporary monuments, and current solutions.
Free and open to the public.  Reservations required.  Please email: [email protected].
The role of public art has been at the center of the controversy over Confederate and other historic monuments and contemporary art. Cities, museums, civic organizations, and government entities are taking active positions in removing, reconsidering, or recontextualizing statuary. Austin, Baltimore, Charlottesville, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York City, Washington, D.C., and other municipalities are reckoning with the legacy of post-Civil War and twentieth-century works of questionable statesmen, glorified generals, and spurious heroes. Institutions are wrestling with issues of representation centering on the interpretation of the past in the form of historic and contemporary public sculpture.
Panel Discussion:
Holland Cotter | Moderator, Co-Chief Art Critic, The New York Times
Gonzalo Casals, Executive Director, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, and Member, Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, New York
Kinshasha Holman Conwill, Deputy Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.
Melvin Edwards, Artist, New Jersey
Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Exhibitions Management, Visual Arts, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Dr. Martha Sandweiss, Professor of History and Director, The Princeton & Slavery Project, Princeton University
Keynote Conversation:
Alison Saar, Artist, Los Angeles
Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell Director & CEO, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Artist Presentations:
Diana Al-Hadid
Bryan C. Lee Jr.
Arlene Shechet