From the Editors

This issue of ARTMargins offers a broad variety of perspectives on key problems of current cultural analysis, including colonialism, the problem of class from the point of view of specific historical contexts, and the need to gather multiple perspectives on art’s global circulation and the critical methodologies we use to engage with it. In the opening article, “A Monument in Conflict: Transnational Resistance and the Politics of Commemoration in La Vaughn Belle and Jeannette Ehlers’s I Am Queen Mary,” Kristine Nielsen discusses a 2018 monument that highlights the history of Danish colonialism and Denmark’s role in the Atlantic slave trade. I Am Queen Mary commemorates a 19th-century rebellion against Danish colonial control in the Caribbean, taking as its emblem an Afro-Crucian resistance leader who has largely been erased from official archives. Nielsen contextualizes the monument, which combines traditional figurative features with a novel subject and a complex set of international references, within ongoing debates about monumental form and the formation of collective memory. Through careful analysis of the monument and the controversies surrounding it, Nielsen argues that I Am Queen Mary invites reflection on the stakes of commemoration itself in our present moment.

ARTMargins, Volume 15, Issue 1, pp. 3-5.

doi:10.1162/ARTM.e.363

https://direct.mit.edu/artm/article/15/1/3/135564/From-the-Editors

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