The 2024 Monument Lab Summit in Philadelphia brought together thought leaders influencing and innovating the monument landscape through groundbreaking forms of commemoration, acknowledgment, justice, and belonging around the theme of “Past is Presence.” Monument Lab gathered the monument changemaking community to elevate the power of coalitional public memory and art, convening artists, curators, grassroots organizers, federal officials, municipal and civic workers, educators, students, and more from around the country for keynotes, panels, workshops, and field trips.
Major support for the Monument Lab Summit has been is provided by the Mellon Foundation, with additional support from Stardust Arts, the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, Forman Arts Initiative, The Hearthland Foundation, Open Society Foundations, the Philadelphia Foundation, and Wagner Foundation. Major support for Declaration House has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from VIA Art Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Speakers included:
Elizabeth Alexander (President, Mellon Foundation)
Niya Bates (Public and Architectural Historian)
Sonya Clark (Artist, Declaration House)
Jeannine A. Cook (Founder, Harriett’s Bookshop)
Andrew M. Davenport (Director, Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello)
Susan Jin Davis (Social Impact Officer, Al Roker Entertainment)
Erica Armstrong Dunbar (Historian, Author of Never Caught)
Paul Farber (Director, Monument Lab)
Paul Ramirez Jones (Artist and Professor at Cornell University)
Jane Kamensky (President, Monticello)
Cannupa Hanska Luger (Artist, 2024 Monument Lab Fellow)
Trapeta B. Mayson (Poet and Co-Founder, ConsenSIS)
Christopher R. Rogers (Co-Coordinator, The Friends of the Tanner House)
Salamishah Tillet (Scholar and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times)
Yolanda Wisher (Senior Curator, Monument Lab)