The National Mall's white granite monuments have been joined by new ones for the next few weeks that look and sound a little different.
RASCOE: Six acclaimed artists were given a task - to make monuments commemorating American stories missing from the Mall. NPR's Neda Ulaby paid a visit. Grey Granite Headstone
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: A metal xylophone sits in a colorful playground in the middle of the Mall. It marks the moment when an actual playground in Washington, D.C., was desegregated in 1954. A billboard-sized photograph shows joyful kids, Black and white, sliding, swinging and climbing together. You can play on this monument, too.
SALAMISHAH TILLET: What does it mean to have a work of art, a monument on the Mall, that you can play on?
ULABY: That's Salamishah Tillet. She co-curated this show, called "Beyond Granite: Pulling Together." It's the first-ever official outdoor show on the National Mall. Unlike the Jefferson or Lincoln Memorial, she says, this monument pops with color.
TILLET: And really not just any color. It's really quite rainbow-filled.
ULABY: The idea of the show is to honor American stories that for most of our history were pushed aside. So instead of a statue of a guy on a horse, this monument on the Mall, says Tillet, centers American kids at a critical moment in the fight for democracy.
TILLET: And fight for children, all children to have equal access and the right to play.
ULABY: "Beyond Granite: Pulling Together" was conceived by a group in Philadelphia called Monument Lab. Director Paul Farber says it's not about pulling down old monuments...
PAUL FARBER: But to make room for many stories that have not been told here but are felt here.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE")
MARIAN ANDERSON: (Singing) My country 'tis of thee.
ULABY: When Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, it was because white supremacists had banned her from performing at Constitution Hall. Singing on the Mall reclaimed this most American of spaces. Anderson inspired this show and artist Paul Ramirez Jonas. He built a bronze bell tower to honor her.
ULABY: It plays "My Country 'Tis Of Thee," but it stops right before the very last note.
PAUL RAMIREZ JONAS: So the song is not complete until someone comes in and plays that last note.
ULABY: Someone literally has to step forward and pull a lever.
FARBER: The piece is simply saying, America is not America without you as an active citizen. It needs you in some way.
ULABY: Not all of these monuments are interactive. They were designed by a cross-section of artists - Black, Latino, Asian and Native - from all over the country. The show's gotten enthusiastic reviews for how it redresses the ways American identity is defined by what we publicly mourn.
FARBER: I think about how, in this country, we're bursting at the seams with grief, with loss. We don't always have a place to put it.
ULABY: Putting it on the National Mall, Farber says, makes it matter symbolically like no place else. Think of the AIDS quilt or this new memorial designed by artist Ashon Thomas Crawley. We're standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument by a maze of bright blue platforms.
ASHON THOMAS CRAWLEY: But it's not a labyrinth in a Christian way. It's a labyrinth honoring a different kind of tradition.
ULABY: Crawley grew up in the Pentecostal church. His monument mourns the queer musicians who directed its choirs and sang at its services and who died, closeted, of AIDS-related complications. Playing on speakers is music Crawley wrote.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTISTS: (Singing) We are your family, and we love, and we gather and sing for you...
ULABY: These deaths might not be something that some visitors to the Mall think of as their American story, but this monument makes you think, why not? Crawley also wants to reveal how Black gospel music and the blues can be traced to the Muslim prayers of long-ago people taken from Africa.
CRAWLEY: If you did not have that sonic practice of prayer, you wouldn't have the blues, and you wouldn't have gospel music.
ULABY: The maze, if seen from above, spells out a word in Arabic.
CRAWLEY: And it spells the word (speaking Arabic), which means let this prayer be accepted.
ULABY: When you enter this maze, you are entering the word and the prayer.
FARBER: Where are people finding their way? Where are we finding belonging?
ULABY: Monument Lab director Paul Farber says amidst all the hand-wringing about monuments, these artists are finding solutions, not by limiting or repressing history.
FARBER: We're actually looking for history to come to life.
TIFFANY CHUNG: You know, I think a lot of monuments commemorate the dead people.
ULABY: That's artist Tiffany Chung. Her monument lies near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
CHUNG: I think it's difficult to live. And, you know, when you talk about war and conflict, the consequences also fall on the shoulders of the living.
ULABY: Chung was a refugee when she came to the U.S. from Vietnam. Her monument is a map, low on the ground, made out of thick, black landscaping rubber. It shows flight paths of migrants from Southeast Asia around the world.
CHUNG: For me, it's like, well, instead of erecting something really to hit the sky, I want to spread it out onto the earth because this is us. This is where we will go back to after we leave this world. And this is beautiful. The grass will grow. The sun will wash the things away, maybe including the materials that created this map. But that's the brevity of life. To commemorate the living is really important - what we are able to do while we're here on the earth.
ULABY: Making room on this piece of symbolic earth can maybe help deal with legacies of harm. But the monuments of the show "Beyond Granite: Pulling Together" are not permanent. They will only be displayed until the middle of September.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News, Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF RHYE SONG, "THE FALL")
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