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Mellon Foundation Donates Millions to Create New Monuments That Celebrate Diversity
The Monument Project will create new statues and learning centers (and replace some old ones)
A monument isn’t just a statue; it’s a story. And for too long, America has used monuments of Confederate officers, racist medical practitioners, and slave owners to tell a story of white virtue and Black inferiority. But thanks to the Mellon Foundation, all of that may be changing.
The country’s largest philanthropic organization has pledged $250 million to create monuments that better reflect the nation’s diversity and history. The Monument Project, as it’s being called, will also work to relocate or reexamine existing monuments and the stories they tell.
“The beauty of monuments as a rubric is, it’s really a way of asking, ‘How do we say who we are? How do we teach our history in public places?’” Elizabeth Alexander, the foundation’s president, said in a New York Times article. “We want to ask how we can help think about how to give form to the beautiful and extraordinary and powerful multiplicity of American stories.”
