Faculty Lecture | Akela Reason: “Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York”

Associate Professor of History and Director of the UGA Museum Studies Certificate Program Akela Reason will present the lecture “Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York.”

Lecture Abstract:

As the financial and artistic capital of post-bellum America, New York built some of the most significant monuments to the Civil War. Yet in order to build the city’s monuments, the Republican elite who often spearheaded efforts to commemorate the war, frequently had to negotiate with the city’s notoriously corrupt Democratic politicians and bureaucrats. These two groups disagreed on most matters but especially on issues pertaining to the war and aesthetics. Not surprisingly, the tensions between the groups took material form in the monuments they built together. This talk examines how these conflicts shaped the design of New York’s Civil War monuments in terms of form, function, and siting.