Profs & Pints DC: Monumental Controversies

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Monumental Controversies,” with Fred Bohrer, emeritus professor of art and archaeology at Hood College, art historian, and author of the website Monumental Anxiety: An Anti-Guide to the Monuments of Washington, D.C.

Even more than most cities, Washington, DC is filled with monuments and commemorative spaces. They generally serve mainly as a backdrop of urban life, but in recent years many public monuments in Washington—as well as other American places—have faced new scrutiny, criticism, and even direct attack.

Chief among such controversies is the battle over the Confederate monuments found in every corner of the nation. Washington itself has had a public, outdoor monument to a confederate general and KKK sympathizer—Albert Pike—that President Trump is now seeking to have reinstalled following its earlier removal.

But many other controversies also play out around monuments. Washington has several monuments that bring up questions of sexual orientation, disability, ideology,…