The Monumental Crowd: Collective Attention in Symbolic and Material Spaces

Abstract:Although often ignored in one's daily routine, monuments can serve as potent magnets for crowd gatherings in unveilings, preservation, and protest. The materiality of the monument provides a point of collective attention that binds participants in common cause within a civic space. When successful, these gatherings depend on enacting a set of processes: planning, organizing, gathering, performing, and dispersing. Each occurs within the context of state sponsorship or opposition. As is evident from cases in colonial New York and contemporary Virginia, monuments, no longer mute, can speak to crowds with shared images of morality and justice in their metal and marble materiality.