The article reports on "MONUMENTS," a major exhibition jointly organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles and the nonprofit Brick. The show features 10 decommissioned Confederate monuments, some splashed with protesters' paint, alongside works by 20 contemporary artists including Hank Willis Thomas and Karon Davis. It was assembled by curators Hamza Walker, Hannah Burstein, Bennett Simpson, Paula Kroll, and artist Kara Walker, and has been in development for nearly eight years, spurred by events such as the 2015 Charleston church massacre, the 2017 Charlottesville riot, and the 2020 George Floyd protests.
The exhibition matters because it directly confronts the resurgence of white supremacist and Christian nationalist imagery in public spaces, using art history and contemporary artistic responses to critique the Lost Cause mythology embedded in Confederate monuments. By bringing these contested objects inside a museum for sober analysis, the show breaks new ground and provides a vital, timely counterpoint to the ongoing national debate over public memorials and racial justice. The venue—MOCA's Geffen Contemporary, adjacent to the Japanese American National Museum's Democracy Center—adds historical resonance, as that site was used to detain Japanese Americans during World War II.