This event has taken place. A recording is available to watch on our YouTube channel.
Conversations about statues and other public monuments have become painfully contentious in recent years. This webinar considers fresh and creative approaches to preserving public memory without opening old wounds.
Join moderator Estevan Rael-Gálvez with panelists Regina Chen (MASS Design Group) and Kaitlin M. Murphy (author, Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas) for “Rethinking Monuments and Memorials,” a virtual presentation and live Q&A.
This event is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this event do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Estevan Rael-Gálvez is an anthropologist, historian, and cultural consultant who served as the Senior Vice President of Historic Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Executive Director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, and as the State Historian of New Mexico. He received his B.A. in English Literature and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American Cultures from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Rael-Gálvez is currently the CEO of Creative Strategies 360°, a consulting firm that supports transformative work within communities, governments, universities, and cultural-based organizations. Dr. Rael-Gálvez was recently awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to fund Native Bound-Unbound: Archive of Indigenous Americans Enslaved, an unprecedented digital project centered on millions of Indigenous people whose lives were shaped by slavery. Additionally, Dr. Rael-Gálvez is leading several research and writing initiatives, including the Manitos Community Memory Project, also funded by the Mellon Foundation. He serves on the Board of the Santa Fe Opera, previously served on the Board of the Santa Fe Art Institute, and chaired the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee. A resident scholar at SAR from 1999 to 2000, Dr. Rael-Gálvez currently serves on the SAR Board of Directors.
Regina Chen joined MASS Design Group in 2013. While based in the Kigali office, she led MASS’s immersion practices, helping to guide mission-driven design through community engagement and building the firm’s capacity to understand and partner with stakeholders. She moved to the Boston office in 2015 to lead a research project investigating the impact of capital projects, and developing tools to capture and share lessons learned.
Currently, Regina directs MASS’s Research and Publications arm. In this role, she guides and implements impact evaluation initiatives and oversees editorial strategy in publications and exhibitions. Regina guides MASS’s strategies in frontier markets, bringing together philanthropy, partner and project development, research, and advocacy through five subject matter-specific Design Labs. As the Principal leading the Gun Violence Memorial Project and the Restorative Justice Design Lab, she maintains a deep commitment to community engagement and diligent research in her work, and aims to help create space for truth telling, healing, and collective action. Her work helps to hold our work accountable, internally, with our communities, and with our partners. Regina studied Civil Engineering and Architecture at Princeton University and received her Master’s in Urban Planning at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Kaitlin M. Murphy is Chair and Director of Graduate Studies in the Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory graduate interdisciplinary program, Associate Professor of Hemispheric American Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and affiliate faculty in the School of Art, the Human Rights Practice graduate program, and Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. Murphy researches and teaches courses on art and politics, memory, civil and human rights, and building and rebuilding communities and public spaces during and after conflict.
Murphy is the author of Mapping Memory: Visuality, Affect, and Embodied Politics in the Americas (Fordham UP), which interweaves visual and performance theory with memory and affect studies to theorize memory mapping as a visual and spatial strategy that has emerged in opposition to political discourses and visual economies that overlook certain subjects and human rights abuses. Her writing can also be found in Memory Studies, Genocide Studies and Prevention, TDR: The Drama Review, Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Journal of Spanish and Latin American Cinemas, Human Rights Review, in various anthologies, and elsewhere. She is currently co-editing the Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism. She is also currently at work on two book-length projects, the first of which is tentatively titled Future Histories: Memory, Violence, and Decolonial Reimaginings.
Murphy received her PhD in Performance Studies and MA in Visual Culture, both from New York University, and her BA in Community Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz. Murphy completed an executive education program in Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in 2022.
