Memorials on the National Mall? So Crazy, It Just Might Work

Jerry Saltz wrote a review of Sam Durant's Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C., which provoked a response and comments over at Edward Winkleman's. Here's the gist of Durant's show (provided by Saltz):

The idea for Sam Durant's "Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C." has the virtue of being simple enough to fit on the front of a T-shirt. In the handy pamphlet accompanying the show, Durant says he wants to "move monuments commemorating lives lost during the Indian Wars to the National Mall in Washington, D.C."

[. . .]

Twenty-five replicas of actual monuments from all over the country -- each painted gray, made of a nondescript-looking material -- are placed like an eerie oversize chess set in Cooper's grand main gallery. None have commemorative plaques or markings, although the checklist abounds with evocative names like "Birch Coulee Monument to Faithful Indians," "Monument to Heroes of Wounded Knee," and "Okoboji Indian Massacre Monument." By presenting these monuments as uniform and nameless, Durant renders them mute, separates them from time and place, creating an uncanny forest of implacable signs.

Doesn't sound as if he was doing the stadium clap-clap-stomp while he was at the show, though. He calls it "condescending and inappropriate, as if designed to alleviate White guilt via sanitized WASPish sentiments that do nothing to even hint at the cultures lost or reveal anything about the reality of the slaughters."

Sam Durant, Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.,
2005. Installation view.

By proposing to situate these obelisks on the National Mall—lining the Reflecting Pond—Durant's real focus is the national obelisk. And it's true, it all sounds very WASPish, an installation about atrocities committed against Native Americans featuring a bunch of shuffled forms that never had any bearing on Native American art. But that can't really be helped, can it? It wasn't Durant's decision to make these monuments obelisks; he's only testifying to the fact. I take it that's the point.