Chicago artist Amanda Williams honors "other Washingtons"
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Courtesy of the artist, Amanda Williams and Jon Song Photography
Chicago artist Amanda Williams has turned a stagnant monument on the city's South Side into an evolving, community-driven conversation about who gets to be remembered.
The big picture: As part of the Chicago Monuments Project, Williams asked the public: "Who is your favorite Washington?" to gather the names and stories of everyday people who should be commemorated alongside the George Washington monument in Washington Park.
Driving the news: Williams and city leaders unveiled "Other Washingtons" to the public Thursday, ahead of this weekend's Bud Biliken Parade, when South Siders and Black Chicagoans celebrate the new school year.
Flashback: The Chicago Monuments Project launched in 2020 in response to nationwide protests against public memorials that uphold white supremacy and tell an incomplete history of the country.
- CMP put out a call for new works, asking artists to consider several factors, including how new work would uphold the "unsung people and underrecognized stories" in our city.
State of play: Williams chose a new installation at the 1902 George Washington for the complexity of how people grapple with Washington's story.
- "In many ways, he's a benign figure to people that don't necessarily know the impact of the harm done on enslaved Africans or policies or strategies that were really meant not to bring equity," Williams tells Axios.
- "How do you have a conversation about that without virtue signaling in either direction? 'Oh, he's horrible. We hate him. Oh, he's great,'" Williams says.
Zoom in: The answer was to move George Washington to the background and other Washingtons to the front. Williams and her team collected stories of Washingtons and emblazoned banners with those names and biographies.
- Banners include Alma Washington, whose twin grandchildren shared their grandmother's story, and Candice Washington, Williams' daughter's former daycare teacher, and an educator and facilitator who helped collect stories for the project.
What they're saying: "It really is about making people aware that everybody's important in a kind of way. So it's just presenting them so that you have to re-question" who should be memorialized, Williams says.
What's next: "Other Washingtons" is not cast in bronze like the George Washington statue in its background.
- A website allows people to keep adding the names and biographies of the Washingtons in their lives.