Monument Lab

Join us at tomorrow, July 7, to celebrate the launch of our latest publication “Declaration House”.

Hosted by Monument Lab Senior Curator and Declaration House co-editor Yolanda Wisher, the event will feature a conversation between Monument Lab Director and co-editor Paul Farber and contributor Gayle Jessup White.

Books and merchandise will be available for purchase in the Monument Lab pop-up space, and make your very own button featuring the eye of a Philadelphia “founding figure” inspired by Sonya Clark’s artwork.

RSVP: https://givebutter.com/declaration-house-book-launch-xmgahp

As we approach this 250th anniversary, we are reminded of the complex and deep relationships we all hold to our shared histories and home places, from neighborhood to nation.

When we gathered from all corners of the U.S. last month in Philadelphia for the 2026 Summit School of Monumaking, we welcomed the weight of this complexity from our particular home places. For Summit Co-lead and Monument Lab Director of Advancement, Stephani Pescitelli Stephani Pescitelli, home is South Minneapolis. And that particular weight has come from the recent ICE occupation of our city and state.�
At the Summit, she shared how the occupation in Minneapolis revealed that being bound in this way to people and place, in all of its complexity, is love. Is kinship.

We each brought our own heaviness and hard questions with us, but we also brought with us our love for our particular places and the people we dwell with there. We brought stories of creativity and hope–new ideas, connections, and insights about how we remember and resist in community. We also left with a greater sense of being bound not just to the place next door, but to an interconnected web of places and people, from neighborhoods to the nation.

This is the heart of the School of Monumaking and the work we do at Monument Lab.

Monuments made from this practice of kinship look radically different–they are expressions of an ongoing community conversation. As one Summit participant put it, monumaking this way feels like “discovering soul siblings…Trading ideas and inspiring one another in our shared humanity”
�Tending to this practice and our people is only possible with support from partners like you.

Give today through June 30 and double your contribution to this movement to reimagine monuments as practices and places of kinship and resistance. Donate: https://givebutter.com/kinship-monumaking?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio