Paul Farber, PhD, the director of Monument Lab, has been awarded the 2024 Praxis Award in Professional Ethics. According to the Villanova press release, the Praxis Award is a recognition that rewards an individual who “exemplifies the highest ethical ideals of their profession or has contributed to professional ethics scholarship.”
Farber was recognized for this award based on his, and his company’s, contributions to communities through monumental art. Monument Lab “cultivates and facilitates critical conversations about the past, present and future of monuments.” Its goal is to engage with the public through means such as “exhibitions, research programs and online engagement.” It makes this communication and connection with the goal of enhancing the diversity and inclusivity that monuments around the country provided. Farber’s work is primarily focused on serving communities that feel its history may be underrepresented or misrepresented by the current state of monuments in the United States, and he aims to make sure that these communities’ pasts are properly, fairly and strongly represented.
Monument Lab, a nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia, aims to “democratize historical narratives and memory keepers’ work,” according to its website. Its process consists of diving deep into research about statues, sites and public spaces, sharing ideas with citizens involved in those sites and places, opening up conversations about the historical context of the monuments and creating new prototype monuments and monument spaces in response.
A recent project that Monument Lab has prioritized is the National Monument Audit. The National Monument Audit aims to “assess the current monument landscape across the United States.”
Monument Lab’s research team studied approximately half a million historical records of monuments and properties that federal, state, and local governments take responsibility for. The purpose of this research was to “better understand the dynamics and trends that have shaped our monument landscape, to pose questions about common knowledge about monuments and to debunk falsehoods and misperceptions within public memory.”
The plan of this program is to provide information to another investment, known as Mellon’s Landmark Monuments Project, which will be a $250 million investment with the aim of “transform[ing] the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces and ensure that future generations inherit a commemorative landscape that venerates and reflects the vast, rich complexity of the American Story.”
Monument Lab’s Vision Statement outlines its desire to create a society in which “monuments are dynamic and defined by their meaning, not by their hardened immovable and untouchable status.” On its website, Monument Lab lists its core values, which are as follows: art at the core, process matters as much as outcome, intersectionality for transformation, collaboration with boundaries, integrity with accountability, culture of care, citation and compensation and wisdom and learning.
Overall, it can clearly be seen that Monument Lab is a company with its heart on its sleeve, and its goals, processes and style of work is commendable, hence why Farber won the award.
Monument Lab’s definition of a monument “a statement of power and presence in public” tells us all we need to know about how they value monuments as a whole, and how much its work matters to it and to America as a whole.
