John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University, Providence, RI/USA
April 27 – 30, 2022
https://sites.brown.edu/inheritance/
Inheritance (April 27 – 30, 2022) brings together activists, curators, educators, tribal leaders, artists, historians, heritage workers, and policy makers to explore the range of strategies that institutions and communities are using to respond to contentious representations of race, Indigenous lifeways and history in public art and architecture. Over two days on Zoom, speakers from the US, UK and Canada will offer first-hand accounts of initiatives and actions that resulted in the removal, reinterpretation, or recontextualization of public and commemorative artworks, heritage sites and museum collections, while others will present on efforts to protect and preserve sites that have been ignored or under-resourced. We are in the midst of a reckoning, as communities seek to reshape how (and whose) history is told and commemorated in public space. This may entail radical changes to the art that hangs on our walls, the monuments in our public squares, and the stories that are told at historic sites as the public landscape that we have inherited continues to evolve.