Monuments today serve as a testament to the many significant events of the past and the people involved in them. Whether they represent great leaders, people who served in the military, or victims of unfortunate events, these monuments are physical representations of history which can be experienced in person as opposed to being read about in a textbook. In order to effectively memorialize these important events and people, monuments must be built with the factors of location, significance, and size put in highest regard.
When deciding how to memorialize an event, individual, or group of people, finding an appropriate location is the first step. The location chosen should be one which has an attachment to what the monument is honoring. For …show more content…
If resources are going to be used towards building a monument, it should be for a good purpose. One instance of a questionable choice in monument construction is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. When plans were announced to construct the building, much controversy arose. An article on Suite101.com by Christine Musser stated that "the controversy grew from Jewish and non-Jewish communities, primarily due to the fact that a museum dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust would be built in the United States, who did little to stop the Holocaust from occurring" (Musser). While the Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies of world history and the victims deserve to be remembered, the building of a museum in the United States, which was largely unaffected by the crisis in Europe, was an odd choice to say the least. While that establishment now serves as a symbol of the horrors of genocide, a majority of the most easily recognizable monuments in our country today have to do with leaders or groups of people who made positive changes to the land we live in today. Those various statues and symbols will forever be in the public eye as representations of the past which helped shape a better …show more content…
It has already been stated in this essay that the location of a monument should be in a place that was relevant towards the subject of the memorial. Therefore, it would seem counterproductive to build a monument which dramatically changes an area which the people being honored cared about. Ms. Lin went on to explain in her article that she wanted her “design to work with the land, to make something with the site, not to fight it or dominate it" (Lin). Monuments should be noticeable, but they should not take away the beauty or importance of the area around them. Mount Rushmore is an example of a monument changing a landscape for no reason. An article by Lawrence Downes of the New York Times states that the famous American symbol reminds him of “graffiti” (Downes). The fact that descendants of European colonists drove the natives out of their land in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then went on to carve their leaders' faces in the mountains of that land shows monumental excess on a grand scale. As opposed to the albatross of Mount Rushmore, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial shows that the subtle carving of names in a slab of black granite in the midst of a park can represent just as much, if not
When deciding how to memorialize an event, individual, or group of people, finding an appropriate location is the first step. The location chosen should be one which has an attachment to what the monument is honoring. For …show more content…
If resources are going to be used towards building a monument, it should be for a good purpose. One instance of a questionable choice in monument construction is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. When plans were announced to construct the building, much controversy arose. An article on Suite101.com by Christine Musser stated that "the controversy grew from Jewish and non-Jewish communities, primarily due to the fact that a museum dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust would be built in the United States, who did little to stop the Holocaust from occurring" (Musser). While the Holocaust was one of the greatest tragedies of world history and the victims deserve to be remembered, the building of a museum in the United States, which was largely unaffected by the crisis in Europe, was an odd choice to say the least. While that establishment now serves as a symbol of the horrors of genocide, a majority of the most easily recognizable monuments in our country today have to do with leaders or groups of people who made positive changes to the land we live in today. Those various statues and symbols will forever be in the public eye as representations of the past which helped shape a better …show more content…
It has already been stated in this essay that the location of a monument should be in a place that was relevant towards the subject of the memorial. Therefore, it would seem counterproductive to build a monument which dramatically changes an area which the people being honored cared about. Ms. Lin went on to explain in her article that she wanted her “design to work with the land, to make something with the site, not to fight it or dominate it" (Lin). Monuments should be noticeable, but they should not take away the beauty or importance of the area around them. Mount Rushmore is an example of a monument changing a landscape for no reason. An article by Lawrence Downes of the New York Times states that the famous American symbol reminds him of “graffiti” (Downes). The fact that descendants of European colonists drove the natives out of their land in the Black Hills of South Dakota and then went on to carve their leaders' faces in the mountains of that land shows monumental excess on a grand scale. As opposed to the albatross of Mount Rushmore, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial shows that the subtle carving of names in a slab of black granite in the midst of a park can represent just as much, if not