The Future of Monumentality: What is Monumentality?

Salamishah Tillet
Named by Gloria Steinem as one the best contemporary feminist writers, Salamishah Tillet is a contributing critic at large for The New York Times and the Henry Rutgers Professor of Creative Writing and African American and African Studies at Rutgers University - Newark. She is also the founder of New Arts Justice, an initiative for feminist approaches to socially engaged art at Express Newark and in 2003, with her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, she founded A Long Walk Home, an art organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women.

She is the author of In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece (Abrams, 2021), and Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012). In 2020, she was awarded the Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant for her book-in-progress, “All the Rage: Mississippi Goddam and the World Nina Simone Made.” 

Paul Ramirez Jonas
Since the 1990s, Paul Ramírez Jonas has sought to challenge the relationship between artist, viewer, and artwork. Many of his projects invite viewer participation; in his most recent large public work, Public Trust asked participants to examine the value of their word, each individual declared a promise recorded in a drawing consistent with their beliefs. Whimsical and sincere, he thinks of his works as monuments rather than as sculptures — as situations that address a public, often without an author, and communicate collective ideals, histories, and dreams rather than the individual expression of the artist.

His selected solo exhibitions include a 25 year survey at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston in 2017; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; The New Museum, NYC; Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, Brazil; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; a survey at Ikon Gallery (UK) and Cornerhouse (UK). He has participated in the 1st Johannesburg Biennale; the 1st Seoul Biennial; the 6th Shanghai Biennial; the 28th Sao Paulo Biennial; the 53rd Venice Biennial and the 7th and 10th Bienal do Mercosul , Porto Alegre, Brazil. In 2010 his Key to the City project was presented by Creative Time in cooperation with the City of New York. In 2016 his Public Trust project was presented by Now & There in Boston. He is currently a Professor at Hunter College, CUNY and is represented by the Galeria Nara Roesler in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and New York.

Justin Garrett Moore
Program Officer, Humanities in Place
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist and is the program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has extensive planning and design experience—from regional and urban systems, policies, and projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, public realm, and arts initiatives. At the Mellon Foundation, his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives, built environments, cultural heritage projects, digital and ephemeral programs, and commemorative spaces and landscapes.

Zena Howard
Principal and Managing Director, North Carolina Practice
Perkins&Will
Zena Howard is a Principal and Managing Director of the North Carolina practice of global architecture and design firm Perkins&Will. Zena is known for her success leading visionary, complex, and culturally-significant projects including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC and the Motown Museum Expansion in Detroit, MI. Her current projects include LA’s Destination Crenshaw, the City of Vancouver Hogan’s Alley initiative, and the City of Greenville Town Common Sycamore Hill Gateway project. Zena is helping these and other clients envision and create cultural destinations that will celebrate the history and context of displaced, forgotten communities.