S3:E7 A monumental pull... Paul Farber in conversation with Stephanie Fortunato

The Three Bells

In this episode, our host Stephanie Fortunato speaks with Paul Farber, Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab. They discuss the origins of Monument Lab and the value of understanding, setting, and respecting boundaries for healthy collaboration. The two also discuss Monument Lab’s Pulling Together – an upcoming public art exhibition taking place from August 18th – September 18th, 2023 – which will bring forward new perspectives on Washington D.C.’s National Mall.

External references:

• Monument Lab’s Website: https://monumentlab.com/
• Marian Anderson and the Easter Sunday Concert, April 9, 1939: https://youtu.be/XF9Quk0QhSE
• More about Marian Anderson, and how she came to perform on the Lincoln Memorial steps: https://rediscovering-black-history.blogs.archives.gov/2014/05/20/marian-anderson-and-the-easter-sunday-concert-april-9-1939/
• Monument Lab’s exhibition, Pulling Together: https://monumentlab.com/projects/national-mall-project
• Pulling Together Artist Derrick Adams: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-derrick-adams
• Pulling Together Artist Tiffany Chung: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-tiffany-chung
• Pulling Together Artist Ashon T. Crawley: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-ashon-t-crawley
• Pulling Together Artist Vanessa German: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-vanessa-german
• Pulling Together Artist Paul Ramírez Jonas: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-paul-ramirez-jonas
• Pulling Together Artist Wendy Red Star: https://monumentlab.com/projects/pulling-together-artist-wendy-red-star
• What lies underneath the Lincoln Memorial: https://www.moon.com/travel/arts-culture/secrets-of-the-lincoln-memorial/#:~:text=Hanging%20from%20the%20ceiling%20beneath,started%20when%20it%20was%20built.
• Rhode Island Black Storytellers: https://ribsfest.org/

Paul Farber's bio:
Paul M. Farber (he or they) is Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab. He is the host of The Statue, a podcast series from WHYY. Farber also serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania.

Farber and the team at Monument Lab were the inaugural grantees of the Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 million initiative to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces,” including Monument Lab’s National Monument Audit and the opening of research field offices throughout the United States. Farber has co-curated Monument Lab projects including its original Philadelphia City Hall discovery exhibition (Philadelphia, 2015), citywide public art and history exhibition (Philadelphia, 2017), A Call to Peace (Military Park Newark, 2019), Public Iconographies (Pulitzer Foundation, 2019-2020), and Staying Power (Village of Arts and Humanities, 2021).

Farber's research and curatorial projects explore transnational urban history, cultural memory, and creative approaches to civic engagement. He is author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) which tells the untold story of a group of American artists and writers (Leonard Freed, Angela Davis, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Audre Lorde) who found refuge along the Berlin Wall and in Cold War Germany in order to confront political divisions back home in the United States. He is also co-editor with Ken Lum of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia (Temple University Press, 2019), a public art and history handbook designed to generate new critical ways of thinking about and building monuments.

In addition to his work with Monument Lab, Farber served as curator for the inaugural Artist-in-Residence Program at the Office of the District Attorney of Philadelphia (2020), keynote speaker for the Americans for the Arts national conference (2020), and Scholar in Residence at Mural Arts Philadelphia (2015–2017). He serves as an advisor to numerous monument and memorial projects including for the City of Newark and the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. His work on culture has also previously appeared in The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, Al Jazeera, Museums & Social Issues, Diplomatic History, Art & the Public Sphere, Vibe, and on NPR.

Farber earned a PhD and MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.