Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio (proposal)

Columbus Monthly, Columbus, Ohio
January 2021

In autumn 2020, I was invited by Columbus Monthly magazine to imagine a new monument replacing a twenty-two-feet-tall, bronze statue of Christopher Columbus recently removed from outside City Hall. Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio, proposes placement of an oval-shaped, stone platform to front the south plaza entry to the building. The overall dimensions of the platform would be 36 inches high x 22 feet wide by x 14 feet deep, including a 42-inch-wide ramp spiraling up to its top. The 28-inch-high letters carved into the stone face read, JUST US.

The width of Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio, equals in measure the 22-foot height of the statue of Christopher Columbus that formerly stood here. In place of the bronze figure, the stone platform offers Columbus residents a place to assemble, to be seen and heard at our city hall. Widespread local and national protests supporting racial and social justice through the summer and fall of 2020, and the record-smashing voter turnout for that year’s November presidential election demonstrated to all that the exercise of democracy isn’t the work of politicians only, it’s our work—as equal citizens. And if democracy, like justice, is a process not a state, then this work is unending. Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio, renders visible a site for our rising to take up the task before us.

Related reading Monument for the People of Columbus, unpublished proposal by Michael Mercil, November 2020
Notes on a Monument, by Michael Mercil, November 2020