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Hundreds of public monuments have come down during the social and racial reckoning currently sweeping our country. And while Seattle has not been at the epicenter of the furor over public monuments, there have been heated discussions over the monument to Confederate soldiers in a Capitol Hill cemetery and a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Fremont.

In the United States, the issue of what to do with public monuments has been very polarizing. Why do we care so much about these statues? In her book\\xa0Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America\\u2019s Public Monuments, professor of art crime Erin L. Thompson looked at the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies \\u2014 including the enslaved man who helped make the Statue of\\xa0Freedom\\xa0that tops the United States Capitol. Monuments have come to mean many things to different people, and the battles over them are a tangle of aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues.

Ultimately, monuments symbolize what we value and keeping them up or removing them sends a message. How do we decide who and what should be represented with new monuments? Which existing statues should stay up, and which should come down? Who should make these decisions \\u2014 and how should they decide?

Erin L. Thompson, holds a Ph.D. and a J.D. and is a professor of art crime at the City University of New York. In addition to\\xa0Smashing Statues,\\xa0she is the author of\\xa0Possession: The Curious History of Private Collectors from Antiquity to the Present, and her writing has appeared in\\xa0The\\xa0Washington Post,\\xa0The\\xa0New York Times,\\xa0Smithsonian\\xa0magazine, and\\xa0Art in America. She lives in New York.

Sarah Mirk\\xa0is a comics journalist, teacher, and editor. A former reporter for\\xa0The Stranger\\xa0and the\\xa0Portland Mercury, she is now a contributing editor at comics publication\\xa0The Nib\\xa0and a digital producer at The Center for Investigative Reporting. She is the author of several books, including\\xa0Guantanamo Voices: True Stories from the World\\u2019s Most Infamous Prison, which\\xa0The\\xa0New York Times\\xa0named one of the 10 best graphic novels of 2020.

Buy the Book: Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America\'s Public Monuments (Hardcover)\\xa0from Third Place Books

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