Created during the turbulent summer of 2020 for the exhibition “Field of Dreams” at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York—Theaster Gates’ Monument in Waiting will be on view on Drexel University’s campus for one year, with a series of corresponding programs to be announced in the fall.
Comprised of reclaimed stone plinths and granite tiles devoid of a figure, Monument in Waiting evokes a dismantled public forum. The work responds to ongoing dialogue about preservation and erasure, collective memory and public scrutiny of historical figures and monuments, particularly those that reinforce systems of oppression. This tribute, like much of Gates’ work, asks viewers to reconsider the ways in which monuments are destroyed, preserved or adapted to enshrine moments and figures in our history.
With Monument in Waiting, Gates responds to the removal of Confederate and colonialist monuments and acknowledges the histories of injustice. The artist draws viewers through the installation, into a space for confronting these historical truths, and of aspiring collectively toward a future built upon equal justice. Gates interrogates long-held notions of heroism, fashioning pedestals that allow us to reconsider and expand the possibilities for valiant acts. As an inscription engraved on one of the plinths reads, “Until real heroes bloom, this dusty plinth will wait.”