Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11

Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 traces the evolution and consequences of a new hybrid paradigm, which grants a heroic status to victims of national tragedies, and by extension to their families, thereby creating a class of privileged participants in the permanent memorial process. Harriet F. Senie suggests that instead the victims' families be able to determine the nature of an interim memorial, one that addresses their needs in the critical time between the murder of their loved ones and the completion of the permanent memorial. She also observes that the memorials discussed herein are inadvertently based on strategies of diversion and denial that direct our attention away from actual events, and reframe tragedy as secular or religious triumph. In doing so, they camouflage history, and seen as an aggregate, they define a nation of victims, exactly the concept they and their accompanying celebratory narratives were apparently created to obscure.

Arts & Photography

Senie, Harriet F.

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Since its installation at and subsequent removal from New York City's Federal Plaza, noted sculptor Richard Serra's Tilted Arc has been a touchstone for debates over the role of public art. Installed in 1981, the 10-foot-high, 120-foot-long curved wall of Cor-Ten self-rusting steel instantly became a magnet for criticism. Art critics in the New York Times and the Village Voice labeled it the city's worst public sculpture, and many denounced it as an example of the elitism associated with art and as an obstacle to the use and enjoyment of the plaza. 
Harriet F. Senie explores the history of Tilted Arc, including its 1979 commission and the heated public hearings that eventually led to its removal in 1989 (it was dismantled and is currently stored in a government warehouse in Maryland). Analyzing the archive of popular opinion, Senie shows how the sculpture was caught in an avalanche of shifting local and national discussions about public funding for the arts. She examines the tactics of those opposed to the sculpture and the media's superficial and sensational coverage of the controversy, reframing the dialogue in terms of public art, public space, and public policy instead of the question of whether the removal of Tilted Arc was poetic justice or a dangerous precedent. Senie provides an enlightening history and analysis of a controversy that will continue to inform our discussions about public art for years to come. 
Harriet F. Senie is director of museum studies and professor of art history at the City University of New York's City College and professor of art history at CUNY's Graduate Center.

The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent ?

University of Minnesota Press

Dancing in the Landscape: The Sculpture of Athena Tacha is the most comprehensive presentation of Athena Tacha's outdoor public art of the past 25 years. One of the initiators of "site-specific" architectural sculpture - a significant shift in attitude that brought "land art" into a social context - Tacha has been a finalist in more than 135 national and international competitions. Of the 42 commissions she won, 30 have been executed throughout the United States, from New York to Arizona, Florida to Alaska, including an entire city-block park in downtown Philadelphia. Trained in Greece, France and America as both an artist and art historian, Tacha has always written articulate texts for her proposals and most of these texts are published in this book for the first time. Her executed commissions are presented in large illustrations together with smaller reproductions of 58 models for upbuilt projects, each with an explanatory statement. Through her candid documentation of successes and failures in working with public commissions, Tacha offers her wide experience with hundreds of competitions. As a result, artists, landscape architects, historians, critics and collectors with an interest in the history of public art will find Dancing in the Landscape an invaluable reference.

Dancing in the Landscape

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Grayson Publishing

In recent years the United States has witnessed major controversies surrounding past American presidents, monuments, and sites. Consider Mount Rushmore, which features the heads of the nation’s most revered presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Is Rushmore a proud national achievement or a symbol of the U.S. theft and desecration of the Lakota Sioux’s sacred land? Is it fair to denigrate George Washington for having owned slaves and Thomas Jefferson for having had a relationship with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman, to the point of dismissing these men’s accomplishments? Should we retroactively hold Abraham Lincoln accountable for having signed off on the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history, of thirty-eight Dakota men? How do we reckon with Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy? He was criticized for his imperialist policies but praised for his prolabor antitrust and conservation programs. These charged issues and many others have been plaguing our nation and prompting the removal of Confederate statues and flags amid racial unrest, a national pandemic, and political strife.\nNoted art historian Harriet F. Senie tackles these pivotal subjects and more in Monumental Controversies. Senie places partisan politics aside as she investigates subjects that have not been adequately covered in classrooms or literature and require substantial reconciliation in order for Americans to come to terms with their history. She shines a spotlight on the complicated facts surrounding these figures, monuments, and sites, enabling us to revisit the flaws of our Founding Fathers and their checkered legacies while still recognizing their enormous importance and influence on the United States of America.\nMonumental Controversies presents strategies to create an inclusive narrative that honors the varied stakeholders in a democracy—a vital step toward healing the divisiveness that now appears to be a dominant feature of American discourse. As the public and press reconsider the viability of the American experiment in democracy, Senie offers a thoughtful reflection on the complex lives and legacies of the four presidents memorialized on Mount Rushmore. All four presidents faced some of the most contentious times in our history and yet they championed unity, made possible by acknowledging and accepting opposing opinions as a basic premise of democracy. Historians, curators, government officials, academics, and students at all levels will be riveted by this authoritative work.

Monumental Controversies: Mount Rushmore, Four Presidents, and the Quest for National Unity

History

Americas

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Books by Senie, Harriet F.