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Activities: Context Activities Memorials: The Art of Memory  Back to Context Activities
Houses can be robbed, physical bodies assaulted, and rights taken away, but memory, we like to think, is inviolable. We are formed and defined by what and how we remember, and when our memories are called into question, so too are our identities as individuals. For example, consider how in Toni Morrison's "Recitatif," Twyla is never more distressed than when she realizes that for years she may have been misremembering important events in her life. To guard against such potentially disturbing lapses in memory, the speaker in Chinese American poet Li-Young Lee's "This Room and Everything in It" (1990) attempts to perfect his father's "art of memory." The speaker uses this method both to pay tribute to his father and to mentally file his memories so that he can prepare for "certain hard days ahead, / when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment." His very personal, emotionally invested process reflects how many people think memory works: it is individual and private, and it allows us to keep our senses of self intact even in difficult times. But what about collective memory? Some American sites, such as Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home in Virginia, and Graceland, Elvis Presley's home in Tennessee, serve purposes that are as diverse as the people who visit them. As centers of learning, recreation, and nostalgia, these sites are more than just houses previously occupied by the famous: they are memorial grounds for national and cultural icons. When a nation or group of people formally recognizes an event, person, or idea, the memorialized subject--be it a person, a house, or a monument--becomes part of the nation's "official memory." America is crowded with these memorials, including the Lincoln Memorial, tombs of unknown soldiers, Mount Rushmore, John F. Kennedy's gravesite, and still-preserved Revolutionary War and Civil War battlegrounds. In general, these memorials were built not only to celebrate the dead but also to celebrate the supposedly righteous causes for which they died and to honor the nation. But in more recent years, memorials have been built that honor the dead without necessarily honoring the cause of death. One of the most often-visited, haunting, and cherished national monuments is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Maya Lin, the architect and sculptor who designed the memorial, knew that she needed to recognize the deep mourning and unhealed wounds of surviving loved ones, Vietnam veterans, and a nation divided by an unpopular war. Unlike World War II memorials, for example, which celebrated America's victory and righteous involvement in the battle as well as its fallen soldiers, Lin had to honor the sacrifices of the dead without celebrating the war itself. Her design solved this dilemma by emphasizing the names of the more than 56,000 Americans who died during the war. Since its dedication in 1982, the memorial's somber black granite surface has been perpetually marked by splashes of color--the flowers, photographs, letters, and tokens left behind by the war's survivors, other veterans, loved ones of the dead, and tourists including schoolchildren, families, and international visitors. This monument serves as a public and private mourning wall, a site of convergence for the shared regret and deeply private grief of a nation and its citizens. Sometimes, artists and communities create memorials as historical correctives, to celebrate, as mural artist Judith Baca put it in a New York Times interview, "people who were excluded from history." These memorials hope to remind the public that while the country has moved toward greater diversity and equality for all of its people, there is still work to be done. To pay tribute to the efforts of Chicano rights activists César Chavez and Corky Gonzalez, Baca incorporated their images into "La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra," a mural located in Denver's International Airport [6710]. The nation has not officially memorialized Chavez and Gonzalez, who practiced civil disobedience to fight for Chicano and farmworker rights in the 1960s, but since its installation in 1999, Baca's painting has increased public awareness of the still-ongoing fight for Chicano rights in America. The AIDS quilt, first unveiled in 1987, is another memorial that educates while it recalls the past. The quilt is, in many ways, the quintessential postmodern memorial: its location is not fixed, its content and dimensions are constantly shifting, and its myriad panels break down stereotypes about AIDS by displaying its victims--through photographs, letters, and personal items--as individuals with families, dreams, and distinct identities. The AIDS quilt is also inherently democratic; it is continually added to and changed "by the people" when each victim's loved ones contribute their 12-foot-square panels, many of which use collage techniques to tell stories about the victims' lives. Though the quilt has a permanent home in Atlanta, Georgia, sections of panels can be displayed simultaneously at different locations throughout the country. In fact, at nearly 50 square miles and 50 tons, it is the world's largest work of community folk art, and it would be nearly impossible for any one venue to display the entire piece. Its form, then, serves its function: like AIDS itself, the quilt is almost too large to fathom, and it grows along with the number of people lost to the disease. As a highly personal, portable, and emotionally affective memorial, the quilt is, in its founder Cleve Jones's words, "a silent, stunning display that helps heal, educate, and inspire." It is important to remember that memorials need not be monuments or tangible objects: literature, music, and dance, for instance, can also be used to memorialize cultural stories, traditions, and values. In Woman Hollering Creek and "Mericans," Sandra Cisneros memorializes the Chicano practice of praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe for healing. Alice Walker memorializes the traditional African American rural home in "Everyday Use" by carefully describing its features: the yard, the butter churn, and the quilts. In a sense, every reader of the story "visits" this memorial. In the absence of official memorials, writers such as Cisneros and Walker, along with lobbyists, activists, and other citizens, remind us daily of past heroes and horrors and call our attention to important social issues. People who wear red ribbons for AIDS victims or pink ribbons for breast cancer victims; Chicano families that build altars to Catholic saints in their homes; bereaved survivors who preserve rooms as shrines to lost loved ones: these people all practice memorializing in their everyday lives. Questions
[2161] Eero Saarinen, Saarinen's Conceptual Drawing of the Gateway Arch (1948), courtesy of the National Park Service, Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. The Gateway Arch was built to commemorate the westward expansion of the United States and to inspire like-minded ambition. Just below the arch sits the courthouse where the Dredd Scott decision declared that slaves were not human, a stark reminder of the costs of America's growth. [6710] Judith F. Baca, La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra (2000), courtesy of the Social and Public Art Resource Center, © Judith F. Baca, La Memoria de Nuestra Tierra: Colorado, 2000. Judith Baca is an acclaimed muralist who believes that art can be a forum for social dialogue, as well as a tool for social change. In this sense, she shares much with Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherrie Moraga, and Helena Maria Viramontes and builds on the work of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. [7163] Esther Bubley, Inside the Lincoln Memorial (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USW3-040346-D]. After Lincoln's assassination, his image became iconic in the North and among African Americans, appearing in ceremonies; popular songs and prints; statuary, including his templelike memorial; and poetry such as Whitman's "Oh Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." [7974] Janjapp Dekker, Sandra Cisneros with Virgen de Guadalupe Boots (n.d.), courtesy of El Andar magazine. Sandra Cisneros spent her childhood moving with her parents and six brothers between Chicago and Mexico City. Here we see her wearing boots bearing images of La Virgen de Guadalupe, a vision of the Virgin Mary that appeared to an Indian convert in the sixteenth century. Cisneros writes about La Virgen in "Guadalupe the Sex Goddess" and "Little Miracles, Kept Promises." Cisneros currently resides in San Antonio, Texas. [9161] Historic American Buildings Survey, View of the Memorial from the Southwest End--Vietnam Veterans Memorial ([1982] 1996), courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, DC,WASH,643-10]. The design specifications for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial said that the work must "make no political statement regarding the war and its conduct" and that it must include the name of each of the 57,661 Americans who died in the conflict. Maya Lin's winning design was controversial, but the then-twenty-one-year-old Yale architectural student persevered in seeing it through to completion. Viewed within the tradition of land art, the memorial makes a sharp cut into the sloping land, with a gravestone-like surface of polished granite that literally reflects viewers back into the open wound through which they walk. [9164] Historic American Buildings Survey, Panels 37E and 38E--Vietnam Veterans Memorial ([1982] 1996), courtesy of the Library of Congress [HABS, DC,WASH,643-70]. Thousands of veterans, the families and friends of those who died in the Vietnam War, and visitors to Washington, D.C., come to the memorial each year to pay tribute. Over 56,000 Americans died in the war, and they are all named on the panels of the monument. |
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