Monument Lab and Bryn Mawr College have unveiled a permanent public artwork by Nekisha Durrett titled "Don't Forget to Remember (Me)" in the school's Cloisters courtyard. The installation features 9,000 custom pavers arranged in an intertwined knot pattern, with 250 of them engraved with the names of Black staff whose labor was essential to the college's early operations but went unrecognized. The project emerged from a multiyear initiative called Art Remediating Campus Histories, which included symposia, lectures, and community consultations to address the institution's histories of systemic exclusion.
This artwork matters because it directly confronts the erasure of Black contributions to elite academic institutions, using public art as a tool for historical reckoning and institutional change. By embedding the names of forgotten workers into the physical fabric of the campus, Durrett's piece transforms a symbolic space into a permanent memorial that challenges dominant narratives. The project also highlights the growing trend of universities partnering with artists and organizations like Monument Lab to reckon with their own exclusionary pasts, setting a precedent for how art can facilitate difficult conversations about race, labor, and memory.