Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio (proposal)

Columbus Monthly, Columbus, Ohio
January 2021

In autumn 2020, I was among several artists 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 raising an oval-shaped, stone platform on the plaza fronting the south entry to the building. It’s overall dimensions are 36 inches high x 22 feet wide by x 14 feet deep, with 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 demonstrate to us 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 our work is unending. Monument for the People of Columbus, Ohio, renders a site for visibly rising up and taking up the task before us.

Related reading Goodbye, Columbus, by Dave Ghose, Columbus Monthly, January 2021 Monument for the People of Columbus, unpublished proposal by Michael Mercil, November 2020
Notes on a Monument, by Michael Mercil, November 2020