The Monuments Workshop at the University of Kentucky is an innovative, grant-funded program designed to integrate legal expertise into efforts to improve the monument landscape in Kentucky and beyond. We connect groups working on monuments and memorial sites with specialists in issues like legal rights, landscape design, historical research, and community engagement. Like our national funding initiative, the Mellon Foundation Monuments Project, we prioritize local and underrepresented stories and memorials. We work with a wide range of communities and institutions because we believe practical and ethical solutions to monument conflicts require widespread civic engagement.
The Monuments Workshop
Welcome to The Workshop
In the News
More Than Statues
Hundreds of definitions of monuments and memorials exist, from national surveyor guidelines to state statutes. The Workshop does not narrowly define the monuments or memorial sites we engage with. Instead, we work to integrate data about sites from different cultural organizations with the expanded definitions of monuments and memorial sites from national experts like the Mellon Foundation and the Monument Lab.
“Monuments and memorials instruct us in our understanding of the past. They shape powerful national narratives that say some of us ought to be visible and celebrated, and some of us ought to be invisible and ignored.”
The Mellon Foundation, Monuments Project Initiative
“A monument is any specific object, place, or landmark, whether built or natural, which is set aside from ordinary use for special attention or regard, and which comes to fix a set of values and messages in a physical place.”
The Monuments Workshop at UK
The Monuments Workshop at UK
J. David Rosenberg College of Law
620 S. Limestone
Lexington, KY 40506
859-218-1578