A ‘Monument to Listening’ Explores History by Asking for Dialogue

In 1925, a skiff operator named Tom Lee risked his life to save 32 people who had been aboard the M.E. Norman when it capsized into the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee.  

Lee’s story, unmistakably heroic, feels more remarkable the more you learn. Despite not knowing how to swim, Lee braved swift currents in his skiff to transfer helpless passengers to the safety of a sandbar. After pausing to build a fire for survivors, Lee remained on the water through the evening to seek additional passengers, many of whom were ultimately lost in the wreckage. It bears noting that passengers on the Norman were convention delegates (and their families) of the Engineers Club of Memphis—predominately “white folks” according to an Oakland, California newspaper. Lee was a Black man at a time when Black Memphians were experiencing everything from Jim Crow laws and racial covenants to the proliferation of confederate monument making.   

The Memphis community has, since the tragedy, rightly celebrated Lee’s heroism—renaming a riverfront park in his honor after his death in 1952 and erecting a statue in 2007 that dramatically depicts the rescue. As part of a recent redesign of Tom Lee Park, a new public work in created by Theaster Gates is now inviting the community to consider Lee’s legacy in a new light. 

“I want Tom Lee to be remembered as a human who saw other human lives as equally valuable, if not more valuable, than his own,” Gates said about A Monument to Listening. 

In the “anti-monument,” as Gates sometimes refers to it, Tom Lee’s profound sense of shared humanity is expressed abstractly through 32 sculptures, each honed from basalt and each with a unique surface treatment. Many of the sculptures are positioned in a circular configuration to create “a point of reflection.” A 33rd sculpture stands taller than the rest and is polished to have a reflective surface, a nod to Lee’s standout bravery.  

Roughly canonical in shape and cut short by a shallow indentation, each sculpture also resembles a low-back chair or throne. And, indeed, “they are to be sat on,” confirmed Carol Coletta, former chief executive officer of the Memphis River Parks Partnership, which received a Mellon grant to support the project.  

It’s quite the contrast to monuments that seem to encourage stoic reverence or quiet reflection. Coletta stressed that the goal of A Monument to Listening (and Studio Gang and SCAPE’s 2019–2023 redesign of Tom Lee Park more broadly) is a “to create new opportunities for dialogue” and “to ask questions of each other.” 

In addition to its being open to the public, the monument was designed to support site-specific programs by Memphis-area organizations like the Orpheum Theatre, the BIG We Foundation, and the UrbanArt Commission. Over time, Coletta believes groups like these will build on Tom Lee’s legacy and add their own “layers of meaning” to the work. 

The redesign for Tom Lee Park began in 2019 and was distinguished by the engagement of local teens through the Youth Design Leadership program. Construction on the monument began in late 2020 and was completed before the park’s reopening to the public in September 2023.