VA History Office
NCA Monuments Dedicated on Memorial Day
Since Memorial Day was instituted in 1868 (initially as Decoration Day), this event at the end of May became an opportunity to dedicate new monuments in national cemeteries.
[i] The installation of figurative or symbolic memorial objects on hallowed ground fulfills a goal articulated the following year by Army Superintendent of National Cemeteries Brevet Major Edmund Whitman: burial grounds were selected with an eye toward “favorable conditions for ornamentation, so that surviving comrades, loving friends, and grateful states, might be encouraged to expend liberally of their means for such purposes.”[ii] The placement of monuments (not to be confused with individual grave markers) began to arrive in the 1870s.
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Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, still from “Ready,” 2010. (Image courtesy of the artists)
With frenetic editing, absurdist humor and a stubbornly improvisational ethos, artists Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin create deliriously non-narrative videos, sculptures and installations that both investigate and embody the arch, hyper-self-consciousness of social media and reality television.
On Feb. 4, Fitch and Trecartin will discuss their collaborative practice as part of the spring Public Lecture Series, sponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In all, the series will feature 22 virtual presentations by renowned artists, architects, designers and scholars.
Archival slides of the Charles E. Fleming House, Town and Country, Mo. (Photo courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis)