Join artist and educator Jen Berger for a presentation that places monuments within the broader field of public art, examining how objects in shared space shape memory, belonging, and power, and how monuments, often permanent and officially sanctioned, are mistaken for neutral history. Moving from participatory public artworks to the political histories and social impacts of monuments, including Confederate memorials and their removal after 2020, we look towards Vermont to ask what our monuments say about public history and whose stories are centered or missing.
The Vermont Monument Project is a three-year, humanities-based initiative that combines research, analysis, and artistic practice to expand and complicate public memory through dialogue, care, and inclusion.
Banner Image Credit: US Government, Wikimedia Commons
About the presenter
Jen Berger (she/her) is a socially engaged artist and educator based in Vermont. Her interdisciplinary practice—spanning printmaking, performance, installation, and mixed media—explores the intersections of art, care, and justice, with a focus on collective grief, participation, and belonging. Grounded in decades of social movement experience, her artwork connects research, making, and community engagement into public and shared spaces.
In 2019, she founded At the Root, an LLC that supports site-specific projects, printmaking workshops, community collaborations, and public installations that foster dialogue on social and political issues. Since 2020, her practice has increasingly moved into larger public art contexts, examining how art can function as a tool for care within public space. Alongside her studio and community-based work, she is a full-time Lecturer in Art & Art History at the University of Vermont.
