This is a wonderful overview of Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. It’s one of my favorite places to bring my students to discuss the intersection between historical memory, race, and politics, and the monuments themselves allow for a wide range of interpretation. I also highly recommend Sarah S. Driggs’s book, Richmond’s Monument Avenue
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You ever want to see something crazy, remind me to dig up the old proposal from Salvador Dali for a Sally Tompkins statue on Monument Avenue during the Centennial. It’s truly bizarre. The City Council, probably wisely, rejected it…but every time I drive by the Ashe Monument, I think about the allegorical woman slaying a dragon from atop a mushroom (whose stalk was a finger) that might have been there instead!
Now that is something that I would definitely like to see. Has anyone ever written anything about this?