Available January 2027
Edited by Elizabeth Kassler-Taub and Inderbir Singh Riar
An exploration of how monuments—both physical and conceptual—shape memory, identity, and public debate across cultures and time.
This compelling volume invites readers to reimagine how monuments shape history, identity, and public space. Monumentality is explored as a dynamic and contested idea—one that moves beyond grand buildings and enduring structures to understand how societies remember the past and envision the future.
Engaging scholarly essays, accompanied by focused reflections on objects held in Getty collections, analyze the emotional, ideological, and technological dimensions of monuments by tracing their changing meanings across cultures and historical periods. Spanning themes of destruction, circulation, territorialization, and empire, the book investigates topics such as the ruin aesthetic of the Paris Commune, the material remnants of Buddhism in India, the construction of Cold War dams, and the influence of Almohad minaret architecture. Throughout, readers will encounter the enduring effects of colonialism, modernization, and settlements on societies around the world—from nineteenth-century West Africa to postwar Japan and Guam to present-day Israel and Ukraine.
Together, these studies integrate histories of art, architecture, and urban landscapes to examine the role of monuments in contemporary life. Monumentality offers fresh perspectives on what we choose to honor, why the past is preserved (or forgotten), and how the complex narratives embedded in memorials or public art condition our experience of the present.
Elizabeth Kassler-Taub is assistant professor of art history at Dartmouth College. Inderbir Singh Riar is associate professor in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University in Ottawa.
320 pages
7 x 10 inches
100 color and 20 b/w illustrations
ISBN 979-8-88712-067-6
paperback
Getty Publications
Imprint: Getty Research Institute
Series: Issues & Debates
2027