SHELF LIFE: Monument Lab & Creative Speculations with Paul Farber

Paul Farber (Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia) discusses his work as a co-founder of The Monument Lab, which works with community members to reimagine public spaces through stories of social justice and equity; with Justin Reid, director of Community Initiatives at Virginia Humanities.

“Monument Lab has taken the current controversies of public art and the future place of monuments and creatively engaged the public in serious and often playful ways. Using the city of Philadelphia with its prominent history and diversity as its inspiring springboard, each project described soars with meaning and conviction. Monument Lab leads the nation in working to achieve cities where public art is embraced by all their occupants and this book reflects their many unique stories.”—Elizabeth Goldstein, President, The Municipal Art Society of New York

“Public art has a long and distinguished history in Philadelphia. Monument Lab was established not only to bring that history up to the present but also to interrogate the very notion of what constitutes art in the public realm. Monument Lab is a testimony to the success of the endeavor, a record of the works and conversations related to the project, and a brilliant contribution to the wide conversation about the urgent topics related to the production and display of art outside the walls of a museum.”—Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Paul M. Farber is director of Monument Lab. He is author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall and co-editor of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. He serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania.

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This program is part of SHELF LIFE, a series of virtual events presented by the Virginia Festival of the Book, a program of Virginia Humanities. To learn more, visit VaBook.org. #HumanitiesAtHome #ShelfLife