deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is pleased to announce Dr.  Paul M. Farber as the 2021 Paul J. Memorial Cronin Lecture speaker. The event takes place virtually on Wednesday, May 5 at 6:30PM.  

Paul M. Farber is Director of Monument Lab and noted scholar in the field of monuments and public space. Farber is author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall and co-editor of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. He also currently serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design.  

Monument Lab is a Philadelphia based public art and history studio founded by Farber and artist Ken Lum in 2012. Their visionary work aims to rethink the ways art and history exist in public spaces. In collaboration with many artists and communities, Farber has developed groundbreaking critical ways of thinking about and building new monuments for our times. Through both his research and curatorial projects, he explores urban history, cultural memory, and creative approaches to civic engagement. Farber’s Monument Lab is an inaugural grantee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a $250 Million initiative that aims to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces, including Monument Lab’s National Monument Audit and the opening of research field offices throughout the country. 

“Through his inspiring, collaborative leadership at Monument Lab, Dr. Farber is an agent of change across the United States. He shapes discourse around who and what we collectively and publicly honor and centers contemporary artists within these conversations." says Sarah Montross, Senior Curator, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. 

Farber’s talk deepens the context for deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum’s newest exhibitions concerning contemporary art and monuments, Sonya Clark: Monumental Cloth, the Flag We Should Know opening April 9 and the outdoor installation of Jeffrey Gibson: Because You Once You Enter My Home It Becomes Our Home opening June 5. For these projects, the artists have created monumental artworks that amplify underrepresented narratives in American history and contemporary life. 

The Paul J. Cronin Memorial Lecture series was established in 1981 to consider topics broadly focused on changing attitudes towards twentieth and twenty-first century art. The Cronin Lecture series is made possible by a generous grant to deCordova from the Grover J. Cronin Memorial Foundation.  

The event takes place via Zoom webinar on Wednesday, May 5 at 6:30PM. For more details and to register visit thetrustees.org/event/61548/.  

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About deCordova  
Established in 1950 and located just twenty miles west of Boston, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum is dedicated to fostering the creation and exploration of contemporary sculpture and art through a dynamic slate of rotation exhibitions, innovative learning opportunities, a constantly changing thirty-acre landscape of large-scale, outdoor, modern, and contemporary sculpture, and site-specific installations. DeCordova joined The Trustees in July of 2019. To learn more, visit thetrustees.org/decordova. 
  
About The Trustees  
Founded in the city of Boston by landscape architect and open space visionary Charles Eliot in 1891, the Trustees is the nations first and the Commonwealth’s largest preservation and conservation non-profit. For more than 125 years, we have worked to preserve and protect dynamic natural and cultural sites – from beaches and community gardens to farms, historic homesteads, designed landscapes, and hiking trails – for public use and enjoyment. Today we are working to engage a larger constituency of Massachusetts residents, members, visitors, and public and private partners in our work to help protect our beloved and fragile natural, ecological, cultural, and coastal sites for current and future generations. To learn more, visit www.thetrustees.org