Anna Gasha and Shuyi Yin, Ph.D. students in GSAPP’s Historic Preservation program, speak with Ben Wright, a curator, writer, and a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the University of Texas at Austin. His professional work has involved the relocation of Confederate statues from public spaces to museum settings. He was involved in curating an exhibit at UT Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History, “From Commemoration to Education: Pompeo Coppini’s statue of Jefferson Davis,” which sought to critically engage with a Confederate statue previously on the grounds of the university.
In this episode, Wright shares his perspectives on one of the common solutions suggested for controversial monuments: relocating them to museums for historical contextualization and re-interpretation. Particularly, Wright discusses the curation and planning involved in the relocation of a Jefferson Davis statue from the University of Texas Austin campus into a museum and research setting at the Briscoe Center. Wright also examines the role of various media in our understandings of monuments, history, and the decision-making processes surrounding contested heritage.
Source by Columbia GSAPP
