Eliana Willis

After years of studying public sculptures across the U.S. to better understand how these monuments tell the story of our nation’s history, Monument Lab, a public art nonprofit based in Philadelphia, has just erected six of its own on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Titled “Pulling Together,” the temporary exhibition, curated by Monument Lab’s Paul Farber and Rutgers University–Newark professor Salamishah Tillet, features new work by Derrick Adams, Wendy Red Star, Paul Ramírez Jonas, Vanessa German, Tiffany Chung, and Ashon T. Crawley.
It is the first curated outdoor exhibition on the mall—and the first phase of the organization’s new public art initiative “Beyond Granite,” which hopes to bring more inclusive, equitable, and representative commemorative artworks to the heart of the capitol.
“The mall remains a symbol of our Democratic ideals as a nation. ‘Beyond Granite: Pulling Together’ does not shy away from those aspects in our history that can be very hurtful to Americans. We must tell those untold stories fiercely,” Charles Sams, director of National Park Service, said at the exhibition’s unveiling. “We are only stronger by our diversity. Without it, ecosystems collapse.”
Vanessa German, Of Thee We Sing (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
Founded in 2012 by Farber and Ken Lum, Monuments Lab rose to new prominence in the wake of the George Floyd protests, which saw activists vandalize and forcibly remove Confederate monuments. The question of what to do with public memorials with problematic histories sparked a nationwide debate and numerous court battles—and also prompted a wider reevaluation of who is honored in town squares across the country.
Monument Lab was the inaugural recipient for the Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 million campaign to change the face of American monuments.
Paul Ramírez Jonas, Let Freedom Ring (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
The philanthropic organization’s $4 million research grant allowed Monument Lab to conduct a comprehensive audit of national, state, and local monuments in the U.S. What it found was of the 50 most-memorialized figures, 42 were white men, and 25 owned slaves.
In organizing “Pulling Together,” Farber and Tillet aimed to create monuments that would honor the untold stories that have been left out of America’s public landscapes, showcasing them alongside famed memorials to the Founding Fathers and those who have fought on behalf of America.
The artist selected for the project represent a diverse group—three Black, one Latino, one Asian, one Native American, and half of them women.
Vanessa German, Of Thee We Sing (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
At the Lincoln Memorial, German pays homage to the renowned Black singer Marian Anderson, who famously performed in concert at the monument, back in 1939, when the nation’s capitol was still segregated. The sculpture incorporates historical photographs of the event, as well as steel Sandhof lilies, native to Africa, and blue bottles that make up the singer’s skirt, as a reference to their spiritual significance to enslaved Africans who lived on the Gullah in the Lowcountry.
Anderson was also the point of inspiration for Jonas, who has created a carillon sculpture titled Let Freedom Ring with 32 automated bells that play “My Country ‘Tis of Thee”—part of the set list for her performance. The public is invited to ring a 600-pound bell beneath the tower to sound the final note in the song.
Paul Ramírez Jonas, Let Freedom Ring (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by Paul Ramírez Jonas.
Another interactive project is Adams’s America’s Playground: DC, a functional children’s jungle gym also meant to recall the history of segregation. One half of the piece is brightly colored, the other in shades of gray, bisected by a historical photograph of Black and white children playing together at a D.C. playground just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Bolling v. Sharpe declared it unconstitutional to segregate D.C. schools.
For Adams, installing a playground at the heart of U.S. politics is also symbolic. “It’s a place where you have to learn negotiation,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s a place where you have to learn to take turns. It’s a place where you understand leadership, and take risks.”
Derrick Adams, America’s Playground (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by Florie Hutchinson.
For the Living, Tiffany Chung’s installation next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, is a monumental world map dedicated to Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees, tracing their diaspora due to the war.
Red Star’s piece, The Soil You See…, draws a parallel between the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation chiefs who signed U.S. government treaties and the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, by placing a large sculpture of a thumbprint on which she’s inscribed the names of those Indigenous leaders near the mall’s Declaration of Independence Memorial.
Tiffany Chung, For the Living (2023) in the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
“What I noticed is that there really isn’t any color represented on the Mall,” the artist told the Post. “That was surprising to me. Everything is, like, the color of the natural materials the monuments are made of. So my thumbprint is red.”
Finally, there is Crawley’s HOMEGOING, an audiovisual memorial to the victims of the AIDS crisis located on the site of the first display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987. A writer and musician, the artist has installed speakers amid a series of small stages that play a three-movement composition that incorporates music from Black churches, as a tribute to Black queer musicians, as well as a reading of the names of some of those who have died from AIDS.
Ashon T. Crawley, Homegoing (2023) during installation for the Monument Lab’s exhibition “Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (detail). Photo by AJ Mitchell, courtesy of Monument Lab.
The exhibition, which runs for a month, is a collaboration between the National Capital Planning Commission and the Trust for the National Mall.
“Beyond Granite: Pulling Together” is on view at various locations on the National Mall, Washington, D.C., August 18–September 18, 2023. 
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As Beatlemania spread across the globe during the early 1960s, the Beatles found themselves in a whirlwind of flashing cameras and suddenly their faces were everywhere. Until now, however, we have relatively little idea of what the experience was like from their perspective. For the first time, Paul McCartney is showing the public over 250 photographs that he took between November 1963 to February 1964 in a show that has inaugurated the temporary exhibition galleries at the newly renovated National Portrait Gallery.
Most of the photographs are either of McCartney himself or his bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and were taken at a time when the Beatles shot to fame in the United States. In one series, they are shown rehearsing for a pivotal TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 that was watched by an audience of 73 million. That same month, frenzied fans are caught on camera chasing the group’s car down West 58th Street in New York and McCartney also recorded a series of personal mementos from a beach holiday in Miami.
“Looking at these photos now, decades after they were taken, I find there’s a sort of innocence about them,” said McCartney in a press statement. “Everything was new to us at this point. But I like to think I wouldn’t take them any differently today. They now bring back so many stories, a flood of special memories, which is one of the many reasons I love them all, and know that they will always fire my imagination.”
Many of the photographs were recently printed for the first time, having been left as negatives in McCartney’s personal archive and only rediscovered by the musician in 2020. Presented alongside McCartney’s own reflections, they offer a fresh behind-the-scenes lens on the famous story of how four young men from Liverpool became global superstars and redefined the meaning of celebrity for the modern era.
“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” runs through October 1 before traveling across the pond to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, where it will run from December 5, 2023, to April 7, 2024. A book of photographs paired with McCartney’s recollections from the period has also been published by Penguin Press in the U.K. and W.W. Norton in the U.S.
Check out images from the exhibition below.
Paul McCartney, George looking young, handsome and relaxed. Living the life. Miami Beach, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
A visitor looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney in Miami. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
Paul McCartney, John and George, Paris. 1964 Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
A visitor looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney while rehearsing for The Ed Sullivan Show. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
Paul McCartney, Self-portraits in a mirror, Paris, 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
Paul McCartney, Photographers, Central Park, New York, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
A visitor to the National Portrait Gallery looks at photographs taken by Paul McCartney in Paris, 1963-64. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
Paul McCartney, The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day’s Night were based on moments like this. Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eight, crossing the Avenue of the Americas. New York, February 1964 (1964). Photo: © 1964 Paul McCartney.
“Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm” at the National Portrait Gallery. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London.
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It’s an unlikely scenario for any aspiring artist: an artist who has never publicly displayed his paintings and who turns down offers to buy his works, has a dealer proactively visit his studio out of curiosity. (I personally don’t know of an art-world journalist or veteran who has not fielded multiple artists’ requests about getting their foot in the door of a New York gallery.)
But such was the case for Abbott Stillman, a successful New York real estate developer who first took up a paintbrush nearly three decades ago, initially creating representational work—much of it still lifes and portraits—before eventually switching to abstract painting.
In a phone interview with Artnet News, Stillman explained the process of channeling his creativity. “I built a career as a real estate developer and one of the things that’s important in that field, is there are times when it makes no sense to develop buildings. I thought, if I don’t find some other way of being creative, I’m going to do something stupid and create a building when the market doesn’t really need it. So I started painting,” he said.
Abbott Stillman. Photo: Steve Benisty.
Though he never took formal art classes, Stillman did attend graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he took architecture and city planning courses. “I guess that was some type of training,” he noted.
Over the years, he only showed his work to a small handful of family and friends, and, despite enthusiastic responses, declined to share it with a wider audience.
That changed recently when Soho dealer Georges Berges visited Stillman’s studio in Scarsdale, New York. Now, Stillman’s work (roughly half a dozen pieces) is a major component of the gallery’s summer group show, opening August 17, aptly titled “Urban Summer.” Stillman said that in addition to being busy, he just wasn’t all that familiar with the art world but that Berges “struck the right note” when they met.
Stillman has built several monumental buildings in New York City such as the one-million-square-foot Juilliard complex and the landmark Schumacher building on Bleecker Street. He will be rebuilding the Times Square Theater, a project estimated at $100 million.
LowRez HiFi, Full-scale LED matrices in glass vitrines (Lo-Rez) and a grove of touch-sensitive stalks (Hi Fi) Cooper Hewitt (Smithsonian) Museum in collaboration with Höweler + Yoon Architecture. Photo: Alan Karchmer.
Though the Georges Beres group show marks his first foray into the gallery world, his real estate endeavors brought him into the realm of public art when he collaborated on an installation for a building he was developing in 2006.
Low Rez/Hi Fi combined a sound-and-light grove and LED-based building signage. It was selected by the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum as one of the best designs of any kind in the U.S. and displayed at its 2007 Triennial. The work was later displayed at both the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston.
As for his love of art, Stillman credits his mother with frequent—he calls them “insistent”—visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a child, where she would create games and challenges such as by asking him: “How fast can you find paintings that combine red and blue?”
“Little by little, I learned to see. That was really what got me interested in art,” he said.
Abbott Stillman, Summer Meander (2023). Photo: Steve Benisty
And now that his work is on view at a gallery, there is no more room for excuses when it comes to sales. In fact, several works are already pre-sold with prices ranging from about $100,00 to $200,000, an impressive level for an artist who has never technically engaged with the market before.
“I realize I’m very fortunate,” said Stillman. “For years, friends kept saying, ‘You’ve got to sell me one of your paintings’ and I said, ‘Well, they’re not for sale.’ When they found out I was doing this show, they said, ‘Well, now you can’t say no because you’re a professional artist.’”
Stillman pointed out that what’s important to him and is perhaps most interesting about his artwork: “I’ve worked a little bit against the Zeitgeist because I’m not an angry person. I’m actually quite grateful for my life. I’ve had a wonderful, fortunate life. A lot of what seems to be au courant is confrontational and questioning of the culture. I’ve been around long enough that I think I’ve reached the point where I said to myself: ‘We’re here for a relatively short time between bouts of being stardust eternally and I’m pretty grateful for this life.’ I think most people ought to be grateful for their lives. I really try to create a sense of harmony and a little bit of quietude in my painting.”
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