Columbus Announces $3.5 Million Plan to Reimagine Public Art and Commemorative Spaces
The City of
Columbus today announced a $3.5 million plan to transform the city’s
commemorative landscape to more fully celebrate the diversity and multiplicity
of our city. The “Reimagining Columbus” initiative includes a record $1.5
million investment in new public art on the City Hall campus and efforts to promote
diversity in the city’s public art and public spaces. The Mellon Foundation
also announced Monday that the City of Columbus will join eight other cities
funded by its Monuments Project, which will provide $2 million to convene the
Columbus community to collaboratively design a space that re-contextualizes the
city’s Christopher Columbus statue to explain his legacy as it is understood
today, and to uplift the stories of residents underrepresented in the telling
of our city’s history.
“Today, we take the
next step in rewriting our narrative. We take responsibility to tell the truth
about colonialism and racism, and to tell the stories of the people who have
been overlooked and erased from the telling of our history. I invite the entire
community to join us in an inclusive discussion that will allow us to
re-envision how we project ourselves to the world and create a symbolic
landscape that more closely resembles our shared values and aspirations for our
future,” said Mayor Andrew J. Ginther.
Speaking about
the Monuments Project’s funding for nine projects across the country, Elizabeth
Alexander, President of the Mellon Foundation said, “Through the monuments and
memorials that mark them, our civic spaces are where many of us first learn
about the American Story. These grants strengthen new possibilities for
commemoration in American cities so we can better understand that story and the
history that informs it, and so we can celebrate the collective achievements
and extraordinary acts these new monuments and memorials will honor in civic
spaces across the country.”
Reimagining
Columbus establishes funding and a work plan to enact a directive issued by Mayor Ginther when the
Columbus statue was placed into storage. Through the $2 million Monuments
Project grant, the city will engage residents, conduct research into colonial
and contemporary history and leverage best practices in placemaking to assess
the future disposition of the Columbus statue, which was given to Columbus by
its Sister City of Genoa in 1955. Through the process, residents will be
invited to collaboratively ideate on a future public space that would tell the
stories of people impacted by Christopher Columbus’ legacy and allow visitors
to understand and physically interact with difficult history. Led by a team of
historians, indigenous architects and designers, and diversity and inclusion
advisors, the project will use conventional and restorative practices to support
the sharing of personal narratives from Columbus residents to create places and
symbols that our community sees themselves reflected in.
Public engagement
through the Reimagining Columbus initiative will elicit feedback on how public
art and city symbols, such as the city seal and flag, can communicate the
community’s values and aspirations for the future. The City of Columbus commits
$1.5 million – the largest sum it has ever committed to a single public art
project – to create new public art for the City Hall campus that expresses this
vision.
Additional work
on equity in the public art arena will take place through the “Greater
Columbus. Greater Art.” initiative funded by the city and county and led by the
Greater Columbus Arts Council. Through this effort, announced last month,
Columbus will develop its first-ever public art plan, which will include a
diversity, equity and inclusion strategy, detailing actions the community can
take to depict more diverse subjects in Columbus’ public art, cultivate diverse
artistic talent and commission art in more Columbus neighborhoods.
“It is exciting
to share this multi-million dollar investment into public art and engaging
discourse from the Mellon Foundation,” said Councilmember Emmanuel V. Remy. “I
believe this investment into our public art plan will help move our city
forward while creating thoughtful, interactive spaces for our community to
share history, stories and truth.”
Additional
information about Reimagining Columbus is available at www.reimaginingcolumbus.com.