NPS Photos “Perhaps because it represents a historic moment of interracial unity of purpose, it means different things to different viewers much more than an equestrian statue of Shaw ever could. For African-Americans, a battle fought but not won is one of the many meanings that it holds.” -Kathryn Grover An interdisciplinary group gathered on October 6, 2021 to discuss the Shaw/54th Regiment Memorial and the meaning of American monuments and memorial through time. > This recorded event examines the often overlooked history of African American involvement in its creation and use through time. The distinguished panel shares research and reflects on the role of memorialization today. Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scholar of race and representation. She currently serves as the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean of the Yale School of Art.Pinder’s most recent book, “Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago,” explores how Black imagery in the public sphere has empowered communities in that city. Pinder also edited “Race-ing Art History: Critical Readings in Race and Art History,” a 2002 book that has launched multidisciplinary studies of the role of race in art. In addition to her scholarship and teaching, Pinder has extensive experience leading academic, educational, and curatorial work at institutions of higher education and museums. Prior to being named the acting president of MassArt, she served as its provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. Earlier, Pinder served six years as the dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico, the state’s largest fine arts program and was interim director and curator of the University of New Mexico Art Museum. Kathryn Grover is an independent researcher, writer and editor and completed the publication, To Heal the Wounded Nation: African Americans and the Robert Gould Shaw/54th Regiment Memorial, in 2021. She is also the author of Make a Way Somehow: African-American Life in a Northern Community (1994) and The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (2009). Along with Janine da Silva, Grover researched and wrote a historic resource study of significant sites on the historically black north slope of Beacon Hill in 2002 for Boston African-American National Historic Site. She researched and wrote a context statement about fugitives and fugitive assistance in Massachusetts with the architectural historian Neal Larson for the Massachusetts Historical Commission and the National Park Service's Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. Grover also worked on Nantucket under a James Bradford Ames Fellowship on the role of whaling and kinship among Black whalers on the island and the mainland. She has prepared numerous National Register of Historic Place nominations of African-American and Underground Railroad properties. Steve Locke is a New York based artist whose paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations live at the intersection of portraiture, identity and modernism. Locke recontextualizes images and marries the contemporary and historical. Instead of solely memorializing victims or revisiting trauma, he steers the viewer to the source of violence. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, and raised in Detroit, he has an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, among other degrees. In 2020, he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He also has taught at his alma mater, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston and Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, among many other venues. He has also led numerous public art projects, and his work has been reviewed in Art-Form, Art in America, The Boston Globe and The New Yorker. He has also written on other artists in such publications as Art Forum and Hyper Allergic. ► Back to Voices of the Shaw/54th Memorial page |
Last updated: February 2, 2022