With “Pulling Together,” Beyond Granite Breaks New Ground

In Washington DC, the National Mall stretches across two miles, home to a set of monuments and memorials that attract thirty-six million visits each year. People of all ages come from around the world to learn about and honor pivotal American leaders, fallen soldiers, and transformative moments in our national history. In our imaginations, these structures are timeless, and so are the stories they tell. 

But is America’s most iconic public square set in stone? Amid a landscape marked by statues of Presidents Lincoln and Jefferson, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which histories are missing from our complex past?  

What if the commemoration of the American story were up to you? 

These are the questions the team was asking at the Trust for the National Mall—a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service—when they invited Philadelphia-based nonprofit art studio Monument Lab to partner with them on a groundbreaking new exhibition. 

It would serve as the first public project for the Trust’s “Beyond Granite” initiative, a partnership with the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service. And although artists have exhibited work on the National Mall before, it would also become the park’s first-ever curated outdoor exhibition.

Aptly named Pulling Together, the exhibition required a bold vision and unique collaboration among multiple stakeholders including governmental agencies, local community members, and independent artists.

What stories remain untold on the National Mall? It was this prompt that led Monument Lab to select six artists for the exhibition, each of whom answered the question with largely interactive artworks that dotted the Mall’s near-700 acre landscape for a month, beginning on August 18, 2023.