The City of Portland is engaged in a national dialogue about public art, history, monuments, and memorials. With support from the Mellon Foundation, the Portland Monuments Project is a multi-year project with the goal of deciding on the future of seven monuments that were damaged, toppled, or removed following demonstrations in Portland in 2020-2021 by fostering public dialogue  to reimagine and transform the purpose of monuments and memorials in Portland.

This episode is part one of a three-part series as part of the Portland Monument Project. This episode explores the city’s past, and part two will look at the present and the future.

Literary Arts is involved in this project because storytelling is at the heart of our mission, and monuments tell a story about who we were, who we are, what we value, and who we aspire to be.  They tell stories about different communities and the stories they tell are dynamic, in so much as our community is changing, time is passing and the context for these fixed objects changes around them.

In this episode we’ll talk to the staff at the City’s Office of Arts and Culture who are leading this initiative, hear from experts, from historians, from passersby, and from other stakeholders who are questioning our past practices, and hope create change in how we, as a community choose our monuments – who gets to decide which ones are put up and where they go.

Our guide for today’s episode is Archive Project editor and and producer, Matthew Workman.

For a hands-on experience, join local nonfiction comic artist Shay Mirk for a free creative zine-making workshop on the monuments we need on May 9th and May 10th. Click here to learn more and register.