Los Angeles Times — "6 Ideas for New Monuments — in Honor of Migration, a Massacre and a Tree"

“In reporting a feature story on monuments —‘Goodbye guy on a horse. A new wave of monument design is changing how we honor history’ — I spoke with artists, designers and scholars around the country about how monument design is evolving, including the historic narratives that monuments pay tribute to. . . .

In addition to exploring what is already underway, I asked these culture specialists what ideas, people or historical events they might like to see memorialized by a monument. Their ideas not only spanned the continent but also fill some important historical gaps. . . .

Honoring labor

Jeanne Gang is an award-winning architect and founder of the architectural studio Studio Gang in Chicago. Among her projects is the Aqua Tower in Chicago and an ongoing redesign of the lands along the Memphis riverfront.

‘The whole labor history of Chicago. There is nothing in the landscape that really explains that. It involves workers, police and the captains of industry — these different groups. And they all disagree on the history of it. But it’s such an important place for that history. There is a labor history trail, but often there is nothing left to look at. You go to a place where there was a gigantic factory, and now there is nothing there. So some way of marking that. It would be interesting because it has these different perspectives, and they could be revealed and explained in different places.'”

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