Monuments and Memory: Deconstructing Power in Antiquity and the Contemporary

Join the Walters Art Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art for two panels of scholars and artists that deconstruct the power of monuments—both traditional and impermanent—using examples from contemporary art and both museums’ collections.

Monuments are present in many public spheres we encounter, but do they actively shape our lives?  This question and others involving the use of monumental architecture, how monuments and sculpture asserted power in ancient times, and monuments as a device to extend power are the focus of this fascinating discussion. Join Lisa Anderson-Zhu, Associate Curator of Ancient Mediterranean Art at the Walters Art Museum; Michelle Rich, The Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of the Arts of the Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art; Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame; and Tsione Wolde-Michael, Curator of African American Social Justice History at the National Museum of American History as they explore these topics.

This program is one of two lectures that are generously funded each year by the Boshell Foundation. 

Thursday Nights at the Walters are supported by BGE.

About the Speakers

Lisa Anderson-Zhu
Lisa Anderson-Zhu joined the Walters Art Museum as the associate curator of Ancient Mediterranean Art in 2017. At the Walters, she is responsible for artworks from Egypt, the Near East, Greece, and the Roman Empire up to the 4^th century CE. Prior to coming to the Walters, she was the Frederick Randolph Grace Assistant Curator of Ancient Art at the Harvard Art Museums from 2011-2015. She received her doctoral degree from Brown University’s Artemis A. W. and Martha Sharp Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World in 2009. Her interests include the arts of the Roman Empire, provenance research, and the material of bronze throughout the ancient world.

Michelle Rich
Dr. Michelle Rich is the Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of the Arts of the Americas at the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA). She joined the DMA in 2018, and her current projects include writing and editing a collection catalogue, redesigning and reinstalling the Arts of the Americas galleries, and functioning as the venue curator for the forthcoming exhibition Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World. Since 2003, she has conducted archaeology with the US–Guatemalan led Proyecto Arqueológico El Perú-Waka´ (PAW). Her academic and research interests include Maya and Mesoamerican art and figurines, ritual objects, and ritual architecture. Recently, seeking a more nuanced understanding of the role of women in the Classic period Maya world has also become a focus, and in addition to publishing Expanding the canon: Lady K’abel the Ix Kaloomte’ and the political narratives of classic Maya Queens – (Navarro‐Farr, Kelly, Rich and Pérez Robles, 2020, Feminist Anthropology) and Statecraft in the City of the Centipede: burials 39, 38, and internal alliance building at El Perú-Waka’, Guatemala (Rich and Eppich, in Stanton and Brown 2020), she is developing an exhibition tentatively entitled Warrior, Nurturer, Queen: Ancient Maya Women.

Erika Doss
Erika Doss teaches in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Her books include Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (1991, Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities (1995), Looking at Life Magazine (editor, 2001), Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010), and American Art of the 20^th-21^st Centuries (2017).  The recipient of several Fulbright awards, Doss has also held fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Tsione Wolde-Michael
Tsione Wolde-Michael is a Curator of African American Social Justice History and Director of the Restorative History Center at NMAH (National Museum of American History). Her work focuses on redress and restorative justice in museums through innovative approaches to community engagement, collections management, cultural heritage, and exhibitions. Her international work in Mozambique, South Africa and Ethiopia has focused on collaborating with local public history and art institutions to reinterpret colonial collections. Her current projects include a special joint Smithsonian-wide initiative to document the history of the Black Lives Matter movement and leading the Smithsonian’s first-ever Decolonization Tactical Planning Team.

Image Credit
Close up of Wall Panel Depicting Ix K’an Bolon (“Lady Yellow Nine”) In Ritual Dress, Maya, 790 CE.