A major exhibition titled 'Monuments' is on view at two Los Angeles venues, The Geffen Contemporary at Moca and The Brick. The show places nine decommissioned Confederate monuments, some already defaced, into dialogue with works by 19 contemporary artists, most of whom are Black. The centerpiece is Kara Walker's 'Unmanned Drone' (2023), a radical reworking of a removed statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which occupies its own venue at The Brick.
The exhibition matters for its nuanced and expansive approach to a highly charged cultural moment. Rather than presenting a simple, didactic critique, the curators foster open-ended dialogues about history, memory, and monumentality itself. It moves beyond the predictable narrative of artists merely annotating racist history, instead positioning them as active makers who grapple with the persistent legacy of the Confederacy and the very language of public sculpture.