An American Reflection is a digital video installation powered by data points from Monument Lab’s groundbreaking National Monument Audit.

For too long our nation’s monuments have reflected war and conquest. But what would it look like if we honored stories rooted in community and healing, stories that confront monumental erasures and help tell a fuller, more honest history?

An American Reflection was on view in the “MONUMENTS” exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Brick, October 23–May 3, 2026.

What does it mean to unmake a monument—and who is responsible for what comes next? Entrepreneur and CEO Devon Henry, President of Team Henry Enterprises, brings us inside the careful, often unseen labor of removing Confederate monuments across the Southeastern United States. Drawing from more than two decades of experience and the removal of over 23 historic sculptures, this keynote reframes monument removal as a collective learning process—one that teaches us how to practice care, accountability, and kinship while reshaping the civic landscape we inherit and pass on. Moderated Q&A after presentation.

What does kinship look like when memory is written with machines? Poet, artist, and researcher Sasha Stiles invites participants into a classroom where language, technology, and collective memory intersect. Through generative poetry and digital literature, this session expands monument-making into the realm of code and collaboration—asking who authors our shared histories in the 21st century. Moderated Q&A after both presentations (questions submitted ahead/during)

How do monuments move beyond single heroes to hold many stories at once? Washington, DC–based artist Nekisha Durrett, whose work makes the invisible visible through scale, material, and public space, joins artist and educator Michelle Angela Ortiz, known for reimagining monumentality as participatory and community-centered. Together, they explore monuments as living classrooms for collective memory. The session includes a screening of a 7-minute film by Al Roker Entertainment/Monument Lab featuring Durrett’s Don’t Forget to Remember (Me) at Bryn Mawr College. Moderated Q&A after both presentations (questions submitted ahead/during)

What does it take to make monuments in and with the public sphere? Paul M. Farber, Director of Monument Lab and a leading thinker on monuments and civic memory, joins Chuck Sams, Walla Walla tribal member and former Director of the National Park Service, to examine the municipal, coalitional, and stewardship-driven aspects of monument-making. This session offers insight into how policy, partnership, and Indigenous and civic responsibility shape monuments as living cultural landscapes. The conversation will be transcribed for Bulletin 03. Moderated Q&A after conversation.

How do movements—and educators—teach us what monuments should become? Dr. Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, and Shakia Gullette Warren, Executive Director of the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, explore the educational and community activism behind the removal of Confederate monuments. Together, they frame museums and heritage centers as shared classrooms—sites where living monuments, narrative justice, and collective imagination actively reshape public memory. Moderated Q&A after both presentations (questions submitted ahead/during).

Recess is an evening of fun, hands-on workshops and activities for all bodies and abilities, designed to celebrate creativity, community, and joy. Participants can enjoy games, movement activities, arts and crafts, interactive poetry, music, and interactive maker workshops, all in a lively, communal environment. Snacks, drinks, and a live DJ keep the energy flowing.

Gather for a screening of Return of the Sacred Red Rock, followed by a conversation with Director Jeremy Charles and Executive Producer Ben Arredondo, moderated by Ashley Tyner, filmmaker and Monument Lab Director of Communications. Together, we will reflect on film as a site of monument making—how moving images hold memory, protect sacred ground, and mobilize collective action. The session will also feature the trailer for The People’s Way, co-directed by Ashley Tyner and William Tyner, further inviting us to consider cinema as both witness and world-building practice.

What do monuments teach when they are built from struggle, care, and survival? This session brings together three community-centered monument projects that honor collective action—from labor organizing in the Appalachian coalfields, to care work in Little Manila, to Indigenous remembrance and land reclamation in the Black Hills. Through photography, oral histories, ritual, and site-based design, these projects model monument-making as a long-term learning process—one rooted in solidarity, healing, and the shared responsibility to remember together. The session also highlights how Monument Lab’s Re:Generation initiative supports communities in reclaiming suppressed histories, engaging participants in collaborative design, and shaping new practices for public memory.

Self-guided visits: African American Museum in Philadelphia; Barnes Foundation; Fabric Workshop and Museum; Philadelphia Museum of Art Guided tours: Mural Mile Center City Walking Tour with Mural Arts; The President’s House — Power, Erasure, and Public Truth with Monument Lab and special guests

A celebration of monument changemakers who move memory forward. The Labby Awards celebrate artists, organizers, and cultural visionaries who are transforming the landscape of monuments and public memory. Monument Lab created The Labbys to spotlight groundbreaking work that challenges inherited narratives, elevates community stories, and expands what monuments can mean today.

This year, we recognize builder and entrepreneur Devon M. Henry for advancing community-centered monument removal and transformation with unwavering commitment and care and artist Lava Thomas for reimagining the monument form with rigor, beauty, and justice at its core.