War and remembrance

At one time, public memorials were built in a grand classical style well after the event or person intended to be commemorated had passed into history. Controversy swirled around the Lincoln Memorial, for example, a temple-like edifice that wasn’t dedicated until 1922. But the need for public memorial has developed a new immediacy and desire for communal response while minimalist art has become the most useful form for modern monument, says New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman. Rachel Whitebread’s Holocaust monument in Vienna, Maya Lin’s design for the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Oklahoma City National Memorial with its168 stone chairs atop glass bases and conjecture about commemorative work at the World Trade Center site are topics of a conversation between Kimmelman, IU’s inaugural Dorit and Gerald Paul lecturer in Jewish culture and arts, and Betsy Stirratt, director of the School of Fine Arts Gallery in Bloomington.

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• Significant monuments and memorials
• Successful monuments and memorials stimulate discussion
• Public understanding of monuments and memorials
• Minimalism is the prevalent language of memorials
• Cultural significance of 9/11 memorial in Union Square
• Will socially significant, great art be created?
• Responsibilities of contemporary artists to the culture

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