A first-of-its-kind exhibition on the National Mall offers a glimpse into the future of the American commemorative landscape.
We were honored to co-design the branding, signage, wayfinding, and exhibition guide for Beyond Granite: Pulling Together, a month-long exhibition featuring prototype monuments that respond to the central question, “What stories remain untold on the National Mall?”
Curated by Paul Farber and Salamishah Tillet for Monument Lab, Beyond Granite: Pulling Together built out platforms for artist-led civic engagement, historical interpretation, and storytelling as a means for advancing what it means to imagine, build, live, and grow with monuments in the nation’s capital and beyond.
Beyond Granite: Pulling Together was inspired by the 1939 Easter Sunday performance of renowned Black opera singer, Marian Anderson, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, as she was barred from nearby Constitution Hall due to segregation in the capital. Her performance remains monumental in public memory with educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune remarking at the time that the performance “told a story of hope for tomorrow–a story of triumph–a story of pulling together, a story of splendor and real democracy.” The goal of the exhibition was to bring together innovative and experimental forms of monumentality and memory-making to shine a light on and acknowledge Indigenous legacies, histories of enslavement, civil rights, LGBTQ activism, pathways for immigration, environmental justice, and other narratives of American struggle and survival.
Text by Monument Lab
MiniSuper, along with co-designer Connie Harvey, created all the graphics for this monumental exhibition, as well as the branding for the parent project, Beyond Granite.
Read more at Monument Lab, Beyond Granite, and the Mellon Foundation.