This is a lively and engaging look at patriotism and collective memory.In ""Here, George Washington Was Born"", Seth C. Bruggeman examines the broader history of commemoration in the United States by focusing on the George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia's Northern Neck, where contests of public memory have unfolded with particular vigor for nearly eighty years.Washington left the birthplace with his family at a young age and rarely returned. The house burned in 1779 and would likely have passed from memory but for George Washington Parke Custis, who erected a stone marker on the site in 1815, creating the first birthplace monument in America. Both Virginia and the U.S. War Department later commemorated the site, but neither matched the work of a Virginia ladies association that in 1923 resolved to build a replica of the home. The National Park Service permitted construction of the ""replica house"" until a shocking archeological discovery sparked protracted battles between the two organizations over the building's appearance, purpose, and claims to historical authenticity.Bruggeman sifts through years of correspondence, superintendent logs, and other park records to reconstruct delicate negotiations of power among a host of often unexpected claimants on Washington's memory. By paying close attention to costumes, furnishing, and other material culture, he reveals the centrality of race and gender in the construction of Washington's public memory and reminds us that national parks have not always welcomed all Americans. What's more, Bruggeman offers the story of Washington's birthplace as a cautionary tale about the perils and possibilities of public history by asking why we care about famous birthplaces at all.

Memorialisation and the Cornish Funeral Monument Industry 1497-1660 presents an extensive appraisal of several cohesive style groups of monuments, being the products of specific monument workshops in Cornwall, SW England, from the end of the fifteenth century to the Commonwealth. People used memorials to make statements. By examining every Cornish monument from 1497 to 1660uthe good, the unprepossessing, and the downright baduit is only then, with this mass of information, that one can truly contextualise motivations across the social spectrum and comprehend the contemporary meaning of the monuments to the countyAes inhabitants. These statements provide direct contemporary evidence as regards the identity of the commemorateduespecially their Cornishnessuand crucially how they sensed their identity then, rather than how we judge it now. In this work the tombs themselves are described, their iconography, design sources and sculptural perspectives are explored, and the motives of the patrons are deduced. The author goes on to discuss the methods and motives of Cornish memorialisation, identifying an unusualu if not uniqueusustained surge in monument commissions from Cornish workshops towards the end of the sixteenth century, using slate. The overall context of individual commemoration in Cornwall is analysed using wills and probate accounts as a guide to other means of remembrance, both pre- and post-Reformation, building on the motivations for tomb erection. This paradigm of Cornish memorialisation is compared with trends in Kilkenny, Ireland, and Finistere, France, to open up a matrix of memorialisation in the Celtic / Atlantic periphery. One of the discourses of a tomb which is frequently overlooked is its location in the church itself, therefore the author analyses monument positions to reveal how factors such as lineage status, and monumental continuity, affected the positioning of tombs. In the Appendices, the database of Cornish monuments acts as a reference tool to the arguments in the text of this book. The monuments of Kilkenny and Finistere are similarly itemised, together with analyses of masonsAe and helliersAe probate documents, wider sets of Cornish wills, and lists of individually priced burial locations in St Neot and Liskeard. Numerous illustrations of the monuments themselves are also presented, most of which have never been pictured before.

this study documents current and historical conditions of HS-11's interior configurations and finishes. Investigation for this study was conducted by Kingston Heath (principle investigator), Fred Walters (co-investigator), and Aaron Lemchen (graduate student) with Alison K. Hoagland consulting during the period of September 2004 through August 2005. This study is divided into three major parts. The first part consists of the presentation of the HS-11's history and its historic context. The second part consists of gathering new physical evidence from the building itself. The third part of the study will be the evaluation, analysis and conclusions based upon data provided by the previous two parts.

Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore National Memorial, hoped that ten thousand years from now, when archaeologists came upon the four sixty-foot presidential heads carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they would have a clear and graphic understanding of American civilization. Borglum, the child of Mormon polygamists, had an almost Ahab-like obsession with Colossalism- a scale that matched his ego and the era. He learned how to be a celebrity from Auguste Rodin how to be a political bully from Teddy Roosevelt. He ran with the Ku Klux Klan and mingled with the rich and famous from Wall Street to Washington. Mount Rushmore was to be his crowning achievement, the newest wonder of the world, the greatest piece of public art since Phidias carved the Parthenon. But like so many episodes in the saga of the American West, what began as a personal dream had to be bailed out by the federal government, a compromise that nearly drove Borglum mad. Nor in the end could he control how his masterpiece would be received. Nor its devastating impact on the Lakota Sioux and the remote Black Hills of South Dakota. Great White Fathers is at once the biography of a man and the biography of a place, told through travelogue, interviews, and investigation of the unusual records that one odd American visionary left behind. It proves that the best American stories are not simple they are complex and contradictory, at times humorous, at other times tragic.

In tracing the process through which monuments give rise to collective memories, this path-breaking book emphasizes that memorials are not just inert and amnesiac spaces upon which individuals may graft their ever-shifting memories. To the contrary, the materiality of monuments can be seen to elicit a particular collective mode of remembering which shapes the consumption of the past as a shared cultural form of memory. In a variety of disciplines over the past decade, attention has moved away from the oral tradition of memory to the interplay between social remembering and object worlds. But research is very sketchy in this area and the materiality of monuments has tended to be ignored within anthropological literature, compared to the amount of attention given to commemorative practice. Art and architectural history, on the other hand, have been much interested in memorial representation through objects, but have paid scant attention to issues of social memory. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in scope, this book fills this gap and addresses topics ranging from material objects to physical space; from the contemporary to the historical; and from 'high art' to memorials outside the category of art altogether. In so doing, it represents a significant contribution to an emerging field.

A comprehensive guide to the individual churches, catacombs, embellishments and artefacts of Early Christian Rome. The author describes precisely where the extant features are situated and provides details on what can be seen. The ground plans of each site studies allows the reader to compare the proportions of each church with another.;From the 1st-century visits of the Apostles Peter and Paul to the end of the 9th-century Carolingian Renaissance, the book also includes dates of emperors and popes, and important historical events relating to this period in Rome. A historical introduction places the monuments in the context of the Early Christian period and its development in Rome.

Taking as its focus memorials of the First World War in Britain, this book brings a fresh approach to the study of public symbols by exploring how different motives for commemorating the dead were reconciled through the processes of local politics to create a widely valued form of collective expression. It examines how the memorials were produced, what was said about them, how support for them was mobilized and behaviour around them regulated. These memorials were the sites of contested, multiple and ambiguous meanings, yet out of them a united public observance was created. The author argues that this was possible because the interpretation of them as symbols was part of a creative process in which new meanings for traditional forms of memorial were established and circulated. The memorials not only symbolized emotional responses to the war, but also ambitions for the post-war era. Contemporaries adopted new ways of thinking about largely traditional forms of memorial to fit the uncertain social and political climate of the inter-war years.This book represents a significant contribution to the study of material culture and memory, as well as to the social and cultural history of modern warfare.

Offers a new approach to landscape perception.This book is an extended photographic essay about topographic features of the landscape. It integrates philosophical approaches to landscape perception with anthropological studies of the significance of the landscape in small-scale societies. This perspective is used to examine the relationship between prehistoric sites and their topographic settings. The author argues that the architecture of Neolithic stone tombs acts as a kind of camera lens focussing attention on landscape features such as rock outcrops, river valleys, mountain spurs in their immediate surroundings. These monuments played an active role in socializing the landscape and creating meaning in it.A Phenomenology of Landscape is unusual in that it links two types of publishing which have remained distinct in archaeology: books with atmospheric photographs of monuments with a minimum of text and no interpretation; and the academic text in which words provide a substitute for visual imagery. Attractively illustrated with many photographs and diagrams, it will appeal to anyone interested in prehistoric monuments and landscape as well as students and specialists in archaeology, anthropology and human geography.

A beautifully illustrated study of the caves at Dunhuang, exploring how this important Buddhist site has been visualized from its creation to today Situated at the crossroads of the northern and southern routes of the ancient silk routes in western China, Dunhuang is one of the richest Buddhist sites in the world, with more than 500 richly decorated cave temples constructed between the fourth and fourteenth centuries. The sculptures, murals, portable paintings, and manuscripts found in the Mogao and Yulin Caves at Dunhuang represent every aspect of Buddhism. From its earliest construction to the present, this location has been visualized by many individuals, from the architects, builders, and artists who built the caves to twentieth-century explorers, photographers, and conservators, as well as contemporary artists. Visualizing Dunhuang: Seeing, Studying, and Conserving the Caves is a paperback edition of the ninth volume of the magnificent nine-volume hardback set, and examines how the Lo Archive, a vast collection of photographs taken in the 1940s of the Mogao and Yulin Caves, inspires a broad range of scholarship. Lavishly illustrated with selected Lo Archive and modern photographs, the essays address three main areas-Dunhuang as historical record, as site, and as art and art history. Leading experts across three continents examine a wealth of topics, including expeditionary photography and cave architecture, to demonstrate the intellectual richness of Dunhuang. Diverse as they are in their subjects and methodologies, the essays represent only a fraction of what can be researched about Dunhuang. The high concentration of caves at Mogao and Yulin and their exceptional contents chronicle centuries of artistic styles, shifts in Buddhist doctrine, and patterns of political and private patronage-providing an endless source of material for future work. Contributors include Neville Agnew, Dora Ching, Jun Hu, Annette Juliano, Richard Kent, Wei-Cheng Lin, Cary Liu, Maria Menshikova, Jerome Silbergeld, Roderick Whitfield, and Zhao Shengliang. Published in association with the Tang Center for East Asian Art, Princeton University

The National Mall in Washington, D.C., is 'a great public space, as essential a part of the American landscape as the Grand Canyon,' according to architecture critic Paul Goldberger, but few realize how recent, fragile, and contested this achievement is. In "Monument Wars", Kirk Savage tells the Mall's engrossing story - its historic plan, the structures that populate its corridors, and the sea change it reveals regarding national representation. Central to this narrative is a dramatic shift from the nineteenth-century concept of a decentralized landscape, or 'ground'-heroic statues spread out in traffic circles and picturesque parks-to the twentieth-century ideal of 'space,' in which authority is concentrated in an intensified center, and the monument is transformed from an object of reverence to a space of experience. Savage's lively and intelligent analysis traces the refocusing of the monuments themselves, from that of a single man, often on horseback, to commemorations of common soldiers or citizens; and, from monuments that celebrate victory and heroism to memorials honoring victims. An indispensable guide to the National Mall, "Monument Wars" provides a fresh and fascinating perspective on over two hundred years of American history.

Built by the Boulton family between 1817 and 1820, the Grange is Toronto's oldest remaining brick house. During the nineteenth century, the Grange was at the centre of the city's social and political activity. Today, with its collection of furniture, artifacts, and art, it is an historic house museum and part of the Art Gallery of Ontario. In her fascinating essay, award-winning Canadian historian Charlotte Gray brings to life the saga of the Grange, the home of the Boultons and of Goldwin Smith in the 19th century. Devoting as much attention to the formidable women who ran the household as to the men who were key figures in the development of the city, she offers a fascinating portrait of a place and a time. Complementing Gray's essay are shorter essays and reproductions of works commissioned from artists Rebecca Belmore, Luis Jacob, Elizabeth LeMoine, Josiah McElheny, Elaine Reichek, and Christy Thompson that offer inventive responses to a complicated past.

Which memorial's unveiling were the public barred from, so that no disruption could be caused by suffragettes? Why is a Danish prisoner of war remembered in Reading? Who was Goldwin Smith, whose birthplace is marked by a plaque on Friar Street? Did the sculptor responsible for the lion in the Forbury really commit suicide because of it? How many times did Queen Victoria visit Reading, and did she like her statue? The stories behind Reading's memorials bring the people and events of Reading's past to life. This book describes aspects of the town's history by considering some of its - often not well known - plaques, statues and monuments. Even the better known memorials have secrets to yield in the tales of their origins. With descriptions of where the memorials can be found, along with photographs to help identification, the book reveals vivid glimpses of life in Victorian Reading, and reminds us of the physical, as well as social legacy, our forebears left behind them.

Why is the broad avenue leading to St. Peter's called the Street of Reconciliation? What does the Via dei Fori Imperiali--where the ancient imperial forums lie--have to do with Mussolini? How does the name Piazza Navona disclose what is hidden under the square? Via Roma tells Rome's secrets one street at a time. In this brilliant guide, Willemijn van Dijk takes readers across time and place as they wander along the roads of the ancient Italian capital. Street by street, fifty of them, van Dijk allows the stones to reveal their origins, their makers, the significance of their names, and the history they continue to echo. Caesars, popes, dictators, mafia dons, generals, philosophers, and artists. Architecture, ideas, romance, food, and intrigue. Rome is the eternal city to which all roads lead, and van Dijk unfolds the city's rich past through those roads. Via Roma is an indispensable book for any and every inquisitive lover, and visitor, of the city along the Tiber.

Installed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1921 to commemorate the tercentenary of the landing of the Pilgrims, Cyrus Dallin's statue Massasoit was intended to memorialize the Pokanoket Massasoit (leader) as a welcoming diplomat and participant in the mythical first Thanksgiving. But after the statue's unveiling, Massasoit began to move and proliferate in ways one would not expect of generally stationary monuments tethered to place. The plaster model was donated to the artist's home state of Utah and prominently displayed in the state capitol; half a century later, it was caught up in a surprising case of fraud in the fine arts market. Versions of the statue now stand on Brigham Young University's campus; at an urban intersection in Kansas City, Missouri; and in countless homes around the world in the form of souvenir statuettes. As Lisa Blee and Jean M. O'Brien show in this thought-provoking book, the surprising story of this monumental statue reveals much about the process of creating, commodifying, and reinforcing the historical memory of Indigenous people. Dallin's statue, set alongside the historical memory of the actual Massasoit and his mythic collaboration with the Pilgrims, shows otherwise hidden dimensions of American memorial culture: an elasticity of historical imagination, a tight-knit relationship between consumption and commemoration, and the twin impulses to sanitize and grapple with the meaning of settler-colonialism.

This book provides a holistic and longitudinal study of war memorialisation in the UK, France and the USA from 1860 to 2014. Moving beyond the social-political circumstances of a memorial's construction, this study examines memorialisation as a continuing and transformative process. It explores the many ways in which war memorials are repeatedly appropriated, and re-appropriated, undergoing both physical and symbolic transformations. In order to study this full range of transformations, this book presents a unique analytical model that conceptualises objects of memory within three intersecting timescales: the chronological timescale, the conflict timescale and the object timescale. This new methodology facilitates an innovative, holistic approach of understanding engagement with a monument at any given moment in time, allowing meaningful comparisons to be made across both spatial and cultural boundaries. In doing so, it enables an approach to the cultural heritage conflict that moves beyond the socio-political to conceptualise war memorials within a shared cultural experience.

In the past few decades, thousands of new memorials - to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism - have dotted the American landscape. Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In "Memorial Mania", Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express - and claim - those issues in visibly public contexts. Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today.

A study of American attempts to come to terms with the legacy of the Vietnam War, this book highlights the central role played by Vietnam veterans in shaping public memory of the war. Tracing the evolution of the image of the Vietnam veteran from alienated dissenter to traumatised victim to noble warrior, Patrick Hagopian describes how efforts to commemorate the war increasingly downplayed the political divisions it spawned in favour of a more unifying emphasis on honouring veterans and promoting national "healing."