About this Event
The Monuments Workshop at the University of Kentucky invites cultural workers, community leaders, preservationists, artists, scholars, lawyers, students, descendants, and public officials engaged in the evolving work of monuments, memorialization, preservation, and public memory to join us for a two-day convening in Lexington, KY. This event is free, but pre-registration is required, and tickets are limited.
This gathering builds on the journey of Workshop co-founders, Dr. Melynda Price and Professor Zachary Bray, beginning in 2019 with an academic symposium, Written in Stone: American Monuments and Monument-Protection Law. In 2023, they received a grant from the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project to establish the Monuments Workshop, a grant-funded program designed to integrate legal expertise into efforts to improve the monument landscape in Kentucky and beyond. In Spring 2025, the Workshop hosted a 100-person gathering of invited collaborators for Making Space: Expanding Kentucky’s Monument and Memorial Landscape, to introduce regional experts, cultural workers, and community practitioners. Beyond Statues is our inaugural national conference and a reflection of the workshop’s path from focusing on monuments as a symbol of public memory to a holistic understanding of how land, spaces (including monuments), and memory shape our society.
