This installation follows the University of Pennsylvania’s 2020 unveiling of Brick House by Simone Leigh-a monumental sculpture depicting a Black woman’s head atop a form that suggests a skirt or building-which sits at the corner of 34th and Walnut Streets, the nearby gateway to Penn. Monument in Waiting is located at Drexel’s Korman Quad, on 33rd Street, between Chestnut and Market Streets. And we are all indebted to the genius of Theaster Gates.” I am grateful to Philadelphia Contemporary and Forman Arts Initiative for choosing the Drexel campus as the installation site for Monument in Waiting and supporting this bold initiative in public art. “Having Theaster Gates’ magnificent Monument in Waiting installed at a busy pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of Drexel’s campus will give all passersby the opportunity to pause in contemplation about the progress we have made toward fulfilling those ideals, and the distance left for us to travel. “Our democracy was born in Philadelphia on a set of ideals,” said Drexel University President John Fry. The sculpture will prompt viewers to reflect upon our city’s past, present, and future while also engaging the next generation of leaders-today’s students,” said Harry Philbrick, founding director and CEO of Philadelphia Contemporary. “With an interest in urban planning and preservation, Gates is known for redeeming spaces that have been left behind, and we are honored to bring his work to this part of Philadelphia. As an inscription engraved on one of the plinths reads, “Until real heroes bloom, this dusty plinth will wait.” Gates interrogates long-held notions of heroism, fashioning pedestals that allow us to reconsider and expand the possibilities for valiant acts. The artist draws viewers through the installation, into a space for confronting these historical truths, and of aspiring collectively toward a future built upon equal justice. With Monument in Waiting, Gates responds to the removal of Confederate and colonialist monuments and acknowledges the role of monuments in marking histories of injustice. I’m glad to be part of that,” Gates said.

Honoring the truths of a people or a moment is necessary soul work for the nation. Monuments spatially and symbolically mark time and help us conjure meaning. “My monument work, from Black Chapel at Serpentine to the Stony Island Arts Bank and this non-monument in Philadelphia, has me grappling with the best indicators of temporal markers.

This tribute, like much of Gates’s work, asks viewers to reconsider the ways in which monuments are destroyed, preserved or adapted to enshrine moments and figures in our history. The work responds to ongoing dialogue about preservation and erasure, collective memory and public scrutiny of historical figures and monuments, particularly those that reinforce systems of oppression. The sculpture, courtesy of the artist and GRAY gallery, is presented by Philadelphia Contemporary, Forman Arts Initiative and Drexel University.Ĭomprised of reclaimed stone plinths and granite tiles devoid of a figure, Monument in Waiting evokes a dismantled public forum. Monument in Waiting, a sculpture by Theaster Gates, which was created during the turbulent summer of 2020 and first exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York-is now installed on Drexel University’s campus. Theaster Gates, Monument in Waiting, at Drexel University, 2022.

Unveiled meaning