Melting Down Lee, Dismantling History: Inside MOCA’s Unforgettable Confederate Monument Art Show

The new exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, co-curated by Hamza Walker and Kara Walker, surveys a decade of conflict surrounding America's racist past. Featuring 11 decommissioned monuments and work by 19 contemporary artists, the show forces a direct reckoning with artifacts of the Confederacy, such as the Jefferson Davis statue, which now lies supine after being toppled in Richmond. Discover the story of the Robert E. Lee monument from Charlottesville, which was melted down by a team of welders and transformed into shimmering gold-colored ingots under the Swords Into Plowshares project. See how Kara Walker reimagined the Stonewall Jackson monument and his horse, slicing it apart to create the mangled, monstrous sculpture “Unmanned Drone,” an “emblem of despair”. You will also see works like Bethany Collins’s transformation of the Jackson base’s pink granite into delicate Carolina rose petals, a tribute to refusal and the idea that “love is dangerous”. The exhibition opened on October 23, challenging those who seek to enforce a sanitized view of American history, and asking viewers to reflect on whether the past is truly the past.