Photo: Madison Rogers/WBZ NewsRadio
BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — The City of Boston recently unveiled a major series of public artworks, putting a different lens on the city’s story.
Around the country, many communities are having hard conversations about how to memorialize history. Boston is responding to that challenge by creating the “Un-monument | Re-monument | De-monument: Transforming Boston” program.
According to a press release from the city, the program “adopts a multifaceted approach to the discourse on monuments through temporary monuments, education, engagement, and public conversations.”
Photo: Madison Rogers/WBZ NewsRadio
Mayor Michelle Wu said that creating new spaces helps to bring those hard conversations to the table.
"[This project will] create new spaces for dialogue and new connections to the people and places around us,” Wu said.
On Thursday, the city announced plans for more than 30 temporary installations from over 50 artists. Roberto Maite is one of those artists who is using augmented reality to shine a light on the colonial Black community in Boston’s North End, and the hundreds of unmarked graves of Black colonists in Cobb’s Hill Cemetery.
“[By] saying their names out loud hundreds of years later, we pay our respects in ways that they may have never experienced, even in their own lives. That gives me chills,” Maite said. “Tourists come from all over the world to see the Paul Revere statue, the U.S.S. Constitution, and the Bunker Hill Monument. But there’s much more to the story and the people of America."
The city said that this project was made possible through a $3 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, which was the largest investment into public art programming in Boston.
WBZ NewsRadio's Madison Rogers (@MadisonWBZ) reports:
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