Thank you to the many people who have been blog contributors to, and readers of ArtsBlog over the years. ArtsBlog has long been a space where we uplifted stories from the field that demonstrated how the arts strengthen our communities socially, educationally, and economically; where trends and issues and controversies were called out; and advocacy tools were provided to help you make the case for more arts funding and favorable arts policies.

As part of Americans for the Arts’ recent Strategic Realignment Process, we were asked to evaluate our storytelling communications platforms and evolve the way we share content. As a result, we launched the Designing Our Destiny portal to explore new ways of telling stories and sharing information, one that is consistent with our longtime practice of, “No numbers without a story, and no stories without a number.”

As we put our energy into developing this platform and reevaluate our communications strategies, we have put ArtsBlog on hold. That is, you can read past blog posts, but we are not posting new ones. You can look to the Designing Our Destiny portal and our news items feed on the Americans for the Arts website for stories you would have seen in ArtsBlog in the past.

ArtsBlog will remain online through this year as we determine the best way to archive this valuable resource and the knowledge you’ve shared here.

As ever, we are grateful for your participation in ArtsBlog and thank you for your work in advancing the arts. It is important, and you are important for doing it.

Three-dimensional street vendor carts float in the sky and line a park walkway with a city skyline in the background.
Wednesday, July 28, 2021

The exhibition Monumental Perspectives, curated by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), reimagines monuments—what they are and who they honor—using augmented reality. The show displays work from five artists, each of whom was prompted to redefine the meaning of monuments through augmented reality, an interactive technology that overlays digital imagery on top of the physical world.

Set in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park, the exhibition pays tribute to the surrounding community’s workers and serves as “an otherworldly portal between past, present and future worlds, exploring the continuing presence of an indigenous people native to L.A.” One of the works, Vendedores Presente by artist Ruben Ochoa [pictured above], uses magical realism to pay homage to working-class immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Monumental Perspectives is in part a response to the social justice uprisings of 2020 when many monuments were removed. These events raised questions such as Why do monuments exist? and Whom or What do they honor? LACMA’s director, Michael Govan, points out that monuments themselves augment our reality by changing our perspective of place or by causing us to remember past events. The digitization of monuments allows them to span across temporality.

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Source Name: 
PBS News Hour
Author Name: 
Jeffrey Brown and Lena I. Jackson