Monument Lab

Revolutionary Acts is a Monument Lab performance and public art series for 2026 that explores the histories of the American Revolution through contemporary forms of commemoration, asking: What revolutionary stories shape who we are today? 

Rooted in New Jersey, and following a statewide open call for artists, Idlewild Experiential (Idlewild Experiential) and Nandi Jordan (Nandi) were selected to produce “Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds,” a traveling installation and participatory ritual series.

The project centers the often-overlooked contributions of Black women in Revolutionary-era New Jersey through a sculptural ceremonial structure, guided tea rituals, site-based performances, and hands-on art-making workshops. 

“Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds”  invites residents and visitors to reflect on memory, resilience, and the stories that continue to shape civic life.

Learn more and RSVP at the link in bio. 

Ceremony for Revolutionary Seeds is produced by Idlewild Experiential and Nandi Jordan in partnership with Monument Lab. The project is supported by the New Jersey Department of State through the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts), the New Jersey Historical Commission (NJ Historical Commission), and RevolutionNJ.

“Placesteading” offers a new way to understand how Black communities have long created, sustained, and protected spaces of memory and belonging, even when institutions have rendered them invisible.

Sonya Clark’s (Sonya Clark) “The Descendants of Monticello,” installation transforms Philadelphia’s Declaration House into a site where Black presence is no longer a footnote but central to the story of American democracy.

Matthew J. M. Kenyatta ( Matthew JM Kenyatta) writes “If democracy is still being written, then Black urbanism is its marginalia, its countertext, its unblinking gaze.”

Read more from Kenyatta’s essay “Blinking Black Urbanism,” in our latest publication “Declaration House,” order your copy today at the link in bio.

Monument Lab’s 2026 Fellow Kaleb Duarte’s (Caleb Kaleb Duarte) “Embassy of the Refugee” is a sculptural intervention and durational performance. A temporary scaffolding structure wraps around the James Lick Pioneer Monument in the San Francisco Civic Center, transforming the monument into a living site of encounter.

On Saturday July 25th, artists, community members, and cultural practitioners activated the site through shared acts of care, ritual, and performance.

Together, they created temporary offerings, collective gestures, and ephemeral forms of remembrance that imagined new possibilities for public space and the stories they hold.

“Declaration House collapsed the space between then and now and put descendants and their ancestors—free and enslaved—on the same monumental plane.”

Centered around the experiences of participants in the “Declaration House” project, Niya Bates’ (Niya M. Bates) essay “Family Monuments” traces the interconnected histories of the descendants of the over 400 people enslaved at Monticello.

Through portrait sessions organized by Monticello’s Getting Word African American Oral History Project, descendants of the Grangers, Hugheses, Hubbards, Evanses, Gillettes, and other families who would have been in community with or distant relatives of Robert Hemmings gathered not only to contribute to Sonya Clark’s installation but also to reconnect with relatives, rediscover shared histories, and represent the profound legacies of a generation of unsung American founders whose stories have been excluded from the documentary archive.

Our latest publication “Declaration House” is out now, order your copy today at the link in bio.

“Declaration House” lead artist Sonya Clark (Sonya Clark) and Gayle Jessup White, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s first public relations and community engagement officer and the first descendant of Jefferson and the families he enslaved to work for the foundation, reflect on the origins of “The Descendants of Monticello,” Robert Hemmings’ legacy, how art can reshape public memory, and their enduring friendship.

Tap the link in bio to read more from “The Fullness of Ourselves,” moderated by Yolanda Wisher, featured in our latest publication “Declaration House”.

Closing Soon: Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments, curated by Monument Lab Director Paul Farber.

The exhibition traces more than two millennia of artists’ engagement with boxing and celebrity. Ancient sculptures, nineteenth-century European works, and images from the golden age of boxing in the United States, together with contemporary art, reveal how fighters have been shaped as public figures. 

These works illuminate what visitors project onto the Rocky statue: ideals of the underdog—perseverance, spirit, and grit—values shaped by the history of the sport and by lived struggle and aspiration.

Don’t miss your chance to visit “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view through August 2.

Join Monument Lab 2026 Fellow Caleb Kaleb Duarte, for the launch of Embassy of the Refugee in San Francisco.

Kaleb Duarte’s Embassy of the Refugee comprises a temporary scaffolding structure wrapped around the James Lick Pioneer Monument (1894) in the San Francisco Civic Center. Throughout the day, artists, community members, and cultural practitioners will transform the monument into a living site of encounter, activating concrete and bronze through the presence of body, ritual, performance, and shared acts of care. Together, it’ll create temporary offerings, collective gestures, and ephemeral forms of remembrance that imagine new possibilities for public space and the stories it holds.

In Sonya Clark’s “The Descendants of Monticello,” the blinking eyes of Robert Hemmings’ collateral descendants and others who are related to the over 400 people enslaved at Monticello were projected in the windows of Philadelphia’s Declaration House. Through this monumental montage, Clark reverses the traditional gaze of history, pulling Hemmings and his descendants in from the margins of the nations founding story. Together, they look back at viewers, transforming the overlooked witness into a seer.

Read more from Monticello President Jane Kamensky’s essay in our latest publication “Declaration House”.

📚Order your copy today at the link in bio.

Thank you to everyone who joined us last week to celebrate the launch of our latest publication “Declaration House”.

📚Order your copy today at the link in bio.

Editors: Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Paul Farber, and Yolanda Wisher

Contributors: Niya M. Bates, kerrycbickford, Paul Buchanan, Sonya Clark, Andrew M. Davenport, K A I D A V I S, Husnaa Haajarah Hashim, J. Calvin Jefferson Sr., Jabari Jefferson, Gayle Jessup White, Jane Kamensky, Matthew JM Kenyatta, Salamishah Tillet, Auriana Woods

Major support for Declaration House has been provided by Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support from VIA Art Fund and the National Endowment for the Arts (National Endowment f/t Arts). Project partners include Independence National Historical Park and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation’s Monticello (Monticello) and its Getting Word African American History Department (Getting Word African American History Department at Monticello).

📸: Mochi Robinson

Artist Sonya Clark (Sonya Clark) transforms everyday objects, images, and stories into powerful acts of remembrance. Through sculpture, photography, textiles, and installation, she asks us to look closely at what has been overlooked and to reconsider whose histories are valued.

In “The Descendants of Monticello,” Clark activates the unseen by bringing Hemmings’ living descendants and the hundreds of people enslaved at Monticello to literally look back at viewers, inviting us to reconsider who is remembered, who is forgotten, and how national memory is constructed.

By transforming Philadelphia’s Declaration House from a monument to a single founding figure into a space of collective witnessing, Clark’s intervention challenges narrow historical narratives and opens the possibility of more inclusive forms of remembrance, repair, and public memory.

Read more from Anna Arabindan-Kesson essay “Seeing to Remember, Sonya Clark’s Practices of Memory” in our latest publication “Declaration House”. Order your copy today at the link in bio.