A timely new exhibition meets this divided moment

'Monuments' from MOCA and the Brick pairs cautionary art history, poetic retorts.

- CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT

EDWARD V. Valentine’s vandalized 1907 sculpture of Jefferson Davis is on display with other decommissioned Confederate memorials at MOCA’s “Monuments.”

(CARLIN STIEHL Los Angeles Times)

In tiny Denton, N.C., population about 1,600, some Confederate monuments removed from coastal Wilmington, more than three hours drive away, appear to have found a new home at the private Valor Memorial Park.

One was originally erected in 1911, nearly half a century after the end of the Civil War, to honor a local railroad attorney who became the last Confederate attorney general— “Scholar, Patriot, Statesman, Christian,” as the descriptors carved into the memorial’s granite base declares. The other, dedicated more generally to Confederate soldiers from the area, went up in 1924.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy sponsored both. They set out to create twisted public sculptures in enduring bronze that would fabricate a “noble” legacy to reinforce the modern white supremacy of Jim Crow’s racial segregation. Valor Memorial Park stands as a kind of petting zoo for tributes to the moral sewage of Lost Cause mythology. It’s emblematic of why a timely new museum exhibition in Los Angeles is so vitally important.

“MONUMENTS,” the all-caps in the title sounding a loud alarm, is the most significant show in an American art museum right now. Ghastly homages to white supremacy, often suffused with the antidemocratic demands of Christian nationalism, have been on the treacherous rise for a decade. The exhibition pairs cautionary art history with thoughtful and poetic retorts from 20 artists, including a nonprofit art studio.