The Monumental Project

What happens when Indigenous researchers respond to a Western museum calling a codex a "living ancestor"? In this season finale and our first episode entirely in Spanish, Dr. Omar Aguilar Sánchez, Mixtec archaeologist...

When does an artifact in a museum reach "monumental" status? In this episode, we're exploring the concept of belongings as monuments, primarily focusing on the Amoxtli Tezcatlipoca (or the Codex Fejérváry-Mayer) with...

What is creative extremism ? Michelle Browder uses this phrase from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to describe her work as both an artist and activist in Montgomery, Alabama. In this episode, Michelle tells us about...

In this episode, we're continuing our conversation about Freedmen's Town by turning toward some of the efforts currently happening to protect the infrastructure while also modernizing it as a livable community. We're...

In this episode, we're meeting with the folks of Freedmen's Town in Houston, Texas. Freedmen's Town is a historic neighborhood developed entirely by the formerly enslaved people of the greater Houston area after their...

How does a historic site become a national park? In this episode, we meet with Kevin Levin, an educator and public historian who tells about the process of turning Fort Pillow into a national historic site. We discuss...

This episode comes in a time of dire need for historical reflection and current action. Over the past few weeks, the Monuments Toolkit team, alongside the rest of the nation, has watched as anti-immigrant sentiments...

The process of commemorating a site with complicated histories can be a challenge. Whether you're looking to memorialize a tragedy or highlight the hidden history of a site popular for other reasons, there are several...

Monuments are often designed by a single person or small team of people. The (Un)Set in Stone project defies that. Instead, the three initial creators of this monument pass the work onto the community of Montgomery...

As often as we discuss monuments that have stood for decades or centuries, we rarely find the opportunity to discuss a monument just recently erected. In our final episode of 2025, we're excited to share a conversation...

Statues of Christopher Columbus have been at the forefront of the debate on monuments in both the United States and all over the world. In the city of Columbus, Ohio, they launched the Reimagining Columbus project in...

The Hawaiian monuments landscape offers important differences to the rest of the monuments landscape known throughout the continental United States. One of their contentious monuments is the Captain James Cook Monument...

Today, we’re joined by Rivka Maizlish, Senior Research Analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center to talk about the center’s most recent edition of the Whose Heritage? report. The Whose Heritage? report documents the...

Many of our past episodes have focused on the South as the region with the most monuments of the Confederacy. However, the West isn’t immune from having controversial monuments as well. In this episode, we’ll turn our...

Monument removal, relocation, and reinterpretation is a process that has several means to its end. For some, this process involves work from activists in the community appealing to political leaders. In other cases...