Monuments and Memory | BRIdge from the Past: Art Across U.S. History

0:04 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge from the Past. Art across US history. I’m Mary Patterson, and in this series, we walk you through primary source visuals that help tell the stories of America’s past. Today we’re looking at our very first memorial on Bridge from the Past. So I have asked BRI’s director of teacher

0:24 and student programs, Gary Colletti, to help us out. Hey, Gary. Hi, how are you? Thanks for inviting me. I’m so glad you’re here, Gary. Gary’s really good at asking questions that really make you think. So I’m excited that he’s here. As I said, this is the first memorial that we’ve looked at on the show memorials. I never thought of a memorial or

0:46 a monument as a primary source when I was a student, but they absolutely are. They can tell us a lot about the time from which it came and the people who were meant to see them. And it makes us think about history and memory. What do we choose to remember and what does that say about us? So without further ado, let’s jump in. Our memorial today is the Shaw Memorial from 1897, and the artist is Augustus St.

1:12 Godins. So here it is. This is a memorial, and you would find this in Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts. And just like any two dimensional visual that we’ve looked at in the past, we just want to take a minute and look at it, make some observations, and try to formulate some questions. So, Gary, what is your eye drawn to when you see this memorial?

1:35 Well, definitely you just mentioned two dimensional, which makes me think of the idea that it is unusual that it’s sort of one side, but it’s three dimensional that comes from there. So my eye is drawn to the depth of the field. I’m looking at what looks like a sea of men and indicated by looks like they’re rifles.

1:56 And then front and center is Shaw. And then above that is hovering an image of what appears to be a woman. Great. So just right off the bat, some basic questions might be who is this woman? Who is Shaw? Who is this man on the horse? Who are these men? Where are they going? What are they carrying? Right, we need a little bit more context

2:18 to hang our hats on, so I’ll give just a little bit more information to help us interpret the image. So this is a memorial depicting Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, who was the leader of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment during the Civil War. And this moment in this memorial is Shaw and these men marching through Boston to join fighting down in the south.

2:41 So this is a moment from May 1863. Shaw the leader, the man on the horse, and nearly half of the regiment were killed in a battle to try to take Fort Wagoner in South Carolina. So just a few months later, Shaw and a good number of his men are dead. And almost immediately, the survivors of the regiment

3:02 and emancipated slaves from the surrounding area in South Carolina start fundraising to create some sort of memorial. And again, the artist was an American sculptor named Augustus Saint-Gaudens. His name looks French. His father was French, but he was American, and he was kind of a big deal for the time period. So to have this sculptor making this memorial would have been pretty noteworthy.

3:25 And it was unveiled in Boston in 1897. So a little more than 30 years after the event actually took place is when this memorial goes up and just a little bit more about Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th generally. So the Massachusetts 54th Regiment was one

3:45 of the first all black units to serve in the Civil War. And when the Civil War starts, black men were not allowed to fight in the Union Army, but they were allowed to do so in 1862. And what I think is pretty remarkable is that nearly 74% of black men living in the north of military age that’s 18 to 45 end up serving in the Union Army.

4:10 And what’s even more remarkable is that many of them were assigned to labor duty rather than fighting. And they’re paid as laborers, even if they were fighting like the Massachusetts 54th did. So the work is incredibly dangerous. So just being a soldier in general, I think, is in a war is is, of course, dangerous. But these men are doing really hard labor

4:31 and there are high mortality rates because of that. And if they were captured by the Confederate Army many times, they were enslaved on the spot if they weren’t killed because they were treated as rebellious slaves rather than prisoners of war. So it was incredibly dangerous. But again, a lot of men served. And the 54th Regiment was one of the first was one of those famous. And recruits come from across the north.

4:52 So even though they’re centered in Massachusetts and the memorials of them in Boston marching south to go fight, they’re coming from as far away as Canada and the Caribbean. So it’s pretty remarkable how this the you know, this drew men from all over to fight. And again, the tragedy that so many of these men lost their lives in this one attack.

5:13 The fort was never taken. And the heroism, like they kept fighting, just it really inspired people. And it inspired people across the north. So that’s what you see in this memorial. Well, thanks so much for all that context because it really makes the mind reel.

5:34 And back to your original question about what we choose to memorialize, what we choose to remember, I think it’s significant now that you’ve given that context that we started by saying it’s the Shaw Memorial and he’s still front and center, but I don’t think it’s lost that the context of this are the men themselves. Right. The 54th and remembering all of them,

5:56 where it easily could have been him on a horse. It is actually more of a broad image that we see here. Right. So what’s also interesting about this is I said Shaw is front and center, he’s on the horse. And it started as a monument just to Shaw, and he was on the horse. But Shaw’s family objected to that.

6:16 They said, One, he’s way too young. He was only 25 when he died, and he was a colonel, so they thought that that was too grand for him, but they also thought it would be really appropriate to show him amongst his men. So the artist Saint-Gaudens really, goes back to the drawing board and has to figure out what’s this memorial going to look like. And he took it took over ten years to make this.

6:40 And even when it was unveiled in 1897, he was still tinkering with it. So the image I have up on the screen now is actually a slightly later version. Three years later, he was still tinkering with all of the details. So it’s largely the same, but some of the details and the faces and everything are a little bit different. But again, the artist Saint-Gaudens looked at pictures of Shaw.

7:02 So here he is on the left and really tried to recreate his likeness. So he really studied him and was making sure he had everything just so. But again, the men around him are as much a part, a bigger part, really, when you look at the actual memorial than Shaw himself. And he had hired men,

7:22 African American men in New York to pose for him, to model all the different faces and features of individuals on either side of Shaw. So these are the men in front of Shaw and these are the men behind Shaw. And you can kind of see their faces. Some look old, some look young, some have facial hair, some don’t.

7:45 Some of their hats are kind of further down than others. So I think there’s a real attempt at making them, depicting them as individuals. Yeah. The amount of detail is incredible. I mean, I think that’s a major choice when making a three dimensional memorial rather than a painting. The attention to detail here is staggering, is incredibly lifelike in bronze.

8:07 I mean, the folds of the material, but particularly those faces, gives real depth. Right. It’s not many feet deep, and yet if you count the number of faces, you are suddenly drawn into this incredible depth of field that I think is really incredible. Yeah. So you have the faces here,

8:29 but you’ve also have their bedrolls and their knapsacks, everything. Just the detail on the musket. It’s really kind of remarkable that the pains he took to do this. But like I said, he was he just hired models. So whereas Shaw was his attempt to make Shaw look like Shaw actually looked, the specifics of the individual faces of the men who were actually with him

8:53 at this moment in 1863, which is depicted here. They’re lost. Right. These models are sort of stand in for them. Right. And do you think the cause of that is that time has passed that so many perished in that event? What do you think caused that decision?

9:14 Well, I think it may have been a little bit of both. Like I said, nearly half of them died alongside of Shaw. And what’s really interesting is that when the National Gallery of Art just the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. If you ever go to Washington, DC. You have to go to the National Gallery of Art because it’s your art as a taxpayer, you own the Smithsonian. That’s what I like to tell young people.

9:35 And you can see this. They were doing a big exhibit on this, and they were trying to find actual photographs of the men who served with him. And there’s over 100,000 I think that’s right. Men served in the two years that this regiment was in existence. And they could only find this was in 2004, 18 photographs.

9:56 And I think that’s pretty remarkable part of it. There just weren’t any photographs to be had of these men. And if you think about Shaw came from a wealthy family in Boston. So if you have wealth, usually you have money to spend on portrait sittings and things like that. There are pictures of African American men who served in the army, but they’re just hard to come by.

10:18 And there weren’t enough that they could pull together for this particular exhibit. So that’s kind of a long ended answer, but I think maybe it’s a little bit of both. Yeah. And it addresses again, if the question is, what does one get out of this? It’s the individuality of each of these people that really strikes you.

10:40 I have to confess, the first time I actually saw this, if you don’t get a chance to physically go to the National Gallery, the first time I saw this was when I was far younger with a movie that’s about 30 some odd years old now, which is called Glory. And at the end of it highlights this. The closing credits are on this memorial. And I bring that up not only because it’s a movie I highly recommend about the lead up to well, really,

11:02 it’s the development of the 54th, and then obviously, it concludes at Fort Wagner. But about how back to your first question about how memorials it starts off as the story of an individual and becomes a story of the group, of the collective, of these many individuals. I think that’s not insignificant in this particular choice of this memorial.

11:25 I mean, referring to the back of the memorial, if one gets a chance to go see it, it’s sort of laid out that way. It starts off talking about the white officers, then it talks about they refer to African American soldiers. But then together is the big part at the end. And saying that things change because of the working together and what does this mean?

11:45 And I think that’s a huge part of what this memorial is all about. Yeah, I think, as you said, even in the movie Glory, which we have to see Glory. So I’ve never seen it in its totality, all of it. But I am going to watch it because on your recommendation that it started as just Shaw. And Shaw is still central in the memorial, but it’s the men around him.

12:08 And I interpret it as my interpretation, as sort of the greater cause. And that, I think, brings us to this woman floating at the top in the Latin text here, which translates to he left everything behind to save the republic. So I would assume he is referring to Shaw because it started off as a memorial to Shaw, but it was also all of the men around him who joined him in this cause.

12:33 So maybe it starts as wanting to remember the leader, but it’s not just the leader. It’s all of those, in many cases, faceless people. We have their names, but we maybe don’t know what they look like. Who sacrificed everything and are buried with Shaw near Fort Wagner in South Carolina, where they fell together for this cause.

12:57 Yeah again to bring up this is a different kind of primary resource, as you said. And it makes me ask the question of the difference or the similarities between memorials and monuments. And I think memorials, again, to my knowledge, are generally around human beings who have died.

13:19 And whereas monuments can be often do overlap and are about that, but sometimes can be about bigger concepts or to events or things like this. And I think this particular example is an interesting piece in that it is a memorial. And so you can wrap your head around that. Right. It’s specifically I’m imagining specifically about the Fort Wagner march.

13:43 It may not be, though, right? It may be any of their marches that they have. But I think the concept of a republic is a hard thing to put into bronze, but a scene of human beings, multiple human beings, that’s something that I think can give you pause and perhaps invite you to learn more about what’s going on here.

14:05 Yes. And I think that’s a good question, maybe to leave off with for anybody who’s watching us. Is this a memorial, or would you consider it to be a monument? Is it a memorial to the men? Is it a monument to this idea of something greater? These men are giving their lives for the Union, for all men, the end of slavery.

14:26 So which one would you say it is? I think that’s kind of an interesting question to toss out there to the crowd. We’re out of time right now on Bridge from the Past. So gary, thank you so much for helping us out today. We hope you guys will weigh in with your thoughts on Monument versus memorial. Thank you for tuning in. If you like this video, please be sure to subscribe to our channel.

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