In talking with Hamza Walker, Director of The Brick in Los Angeles, and Co-Curator along with artist Kara Walker and MoCA LA Senior Curator Bennett Simpson of the Monuments exhibition currently on view at both venues, about the why of a show more than eight years in the making that feels particularly prescient today, he spoke about the responsibility and the opportunity of institutions to address what’s happening in the world and what people of talking about, thinking about, and caring about. The exhibition has a simple premise: show fallen confederate monuments (19 of them) alongside works by contemporary artists (10 commissions) and let the dialogues: visual, psychic, formal, historical unfold. Seeing things that make us uncomfortable and then asking ourselves why we might feel like we do and then having the courage to be in conversation about all of it certainly makes everyone and everything better.
