What is Beyond Granite?
In 2023, the Trust for the National Mall led the implementation of Beyond Granite, a dynamic new series of installations designed to create a more inclusive, equitable, and representative commemorative landscape on the National Mall.
Generation-defining moments have been commemorated on the National Mall—The Names Project, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the In America: Remember white flag COVID memorial, and the projection of the Apollo 11 launch on the Washington Monument to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Beyond Granite built on the legacy of those exhibitions, which demonstrated that the National Mall is an extraordinary platform for creating powerful and lasting memories, even and especially for exhibits that last a short period of time.
This project, a partnership among the Trust for the National Mall, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the National Park Service, was funded by the Mellon Foundation’s Monuments Project.
The pilot exhibition, Beyond Granite: Pulling Together, was curated by Monument Lab and will feature installations from six leading contemporary artists that respond to a central curatorial question:
What stories remain untold on the National Mall?
Why Is Beyond Granite Needed?
As America’s Civic Stage, the National Mall represents the country’s history and embodies the ideals on which our nation’s democracy was founded. The National Mall is the country’s preeminent location for First Amendment and democratic activities and is a deeply symbolic landscape. As such, it should encompass and reflect more diverse and multilayered representations of American history, experiences, and stories.
Demand for new, permanent monuments and memorials on the National Mall is ongoing and ever-growing; yet the space is finite. The National Mall simply cannot fully represent the breadth and depth of the American experience. Currently, no program is proactively working towards expanding what stories are told and who gets to tell them. Beyond Granite is a unique opportunity to present more of America’s stories on the National Mall, our nation’s most iconic shared public space.
Beyond Granite creates a more inclusive, equitable, and representative process for commemoration on the National Mall—and beyond.
The Monuments Project
As the largest supporter of the arts and humanities in the US, the Mellon Foundation seeks to build just communities where ideas and imagination can thrive. To this end, our core programs support exemplary and inspiring institutions of higher education and culture. The Foundation makes grants in four core program areas: Higher Learning; Arts and Culture; Public Knowledge; and Humanities in Place.
The Monuments Project is an unprecedented $250 million commitment by the Mellon Foundation to transform the nation’s commemorative landscape by supporting public projects that more completely and accurately represent the multiplicity and complexity of American stories. Launched in 2020, the Monuments Project builds on our efforts to express, elevate, and preserve the stories of those who have often been denied historical recognition, and explores how we might foster a more complete telling of who we are as a nation.
