

Partners for Historical Justice
Partners for Historical Justice (PHJ) proposes developing a guide to African American-themed pubilc art in the District of Columbia--ranging from the #BlackLivesMatter street mural on 16th street and the Rosa Parks bust in the US Capitol Rotunda, to the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial in Lincoln Park and the sole Black soldier depicted in the Three Soldiers memorial adjacent to the Maya Lin Vietnams Veterans Memorial. We anticipate this will be content that can be used for stand alone curriculum units at the college and secondary school level, encouraging students to do close looking at statuary, murals, memorials, and other public art works. We will draw on the expertise of the partners (Mark Auslander, Lisa Fager and Russell Smith) who have extensive experience work on Black history in the DMV; Mark also works a good deal on African/African American art history and on curricular and co curricular enhancement. We anticipate that for each of the estimated 25 works there will be a page of illustrated historical contextualization, a brief biographical sketch of the artist and art historical background, and most important, questions to promote close looking and dialogue. Some of the questions will involve unpacking taken for granted assumptions embedded in the work about race, gender, class and other axes of difference. There will also be prompts for observing how members of the public are interacting with the art work and suggested questions to pose to fellow students and members of the public about the work. A map and directions will be included to make it easy to find each art work. The content will be tested and revised during spring 2025 semester in several classes, including Mark's Race and Racism class at American University. Our long term goal is to develop an augmented reality app to promote close art looking in the DMC, which may crowd source community commentaries on theart ; at this point the plan for phase 1 is just to develop content for curriculum enhancement that can be tried out experimentally and revised during spring semester 2025.



