CAA 2026 Recap

We are pleased to report an enormously successful PAD session at the College Art Association conference with standing-room-only attendance and vibrant Q and A that lasted long past our allotted time slot. Our session was titled “The Elephant in the Statuary Garden: Celebrating the 250 th Birthday of the United States.” Papers included:

• Ellery Foutch, Recasting History: The 1893 Columbian Liberty Bell

• Emily Burns, Rethinking Mount Rushmore: Marking Settler Place in Contested Land

• Karlee Bergendorff, Copy-Paste Nationalism: North Korea and the Global Export of Monumentality

• Alan Wallach, Mr. Trump’s Garden

Our takeaways included the global similarities of “dictator chic,” which features ostentatious displays of gold, and gargantuan proportioned nods to imperial architectural forms, including triumphal arches and mythologizing statuary gardens. The U.S. imperial legacy is in full evidence both at Mount Rushmore and in the Washington, D.C. of the past, present, and future. The example of a crowd-sourced commemorative liberty bell conjured in the late 19 th century provided a salutary example of grassroots public art design (albeit sadly failed). At our PAD business meeting which followed, we set several goals for the near term, including streamlining communications with members regarding renewals, making more frequent updates to our website, and hiring a social media manager to amplify our online presence.