Mall Art

The National Mall is a great place to do art, but what should the art say?

The National Mall is a great canvas, in part because of all the history embedded there. It’s been a place of protest, celebration and mourning. It also hosts some spectacular monuments. But critic Salamishah Tillet says there is a lot of history missing from the Mall as a commemorative space, like desegregation and the displacement of Indigenous people.

Kim speaks with Salamishah about the ‘Beyond Granite’ exhibition she co-curated on the Mall, and also with Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada, the artist who created the largest portrait ever to grace the space. It was a six-acre composite portrait of several anonymous young men who had one thing in common. They all identified themselves as Americans.