In her new public art project, Amanda Williams is grappling with what’s in a name. Specifically: Washington.
It is, of course, the surname of America’s first president, memorialized in bronze in the South Side park named in his honor, where Williams’ latest work was unveiled Thursday.
In “Other Washingtons,” commissioned by the Chicago Monuments Project, Williams looks beyond George. The work honors everyone from Harold Washington, the city’s first Black mayor, to entertainment superstars such as Denzel, Kerry and Dinah, as well as everyday Chicagoans, including Benjamin Washington, the longtime band director at King College Prep high school.
Their stories are told through words and photos on 40 colorful flags and banners that now surround the existing statue of a mounted Washington, laid out like the ring of American flags at the Washington Monument in D.C.
“The stories don’t have to be something extraordinary in the sense of how we, in present day, think people should be kind of deified,” said Williams, the prolific 51-year-old local artist and architect. “They can just be: They were important to an individual, and that individual wrote about them, and they appear on these banners.”
When she set out to create the work, Williams wanted to add context to the statue near the corner of 51st Street and South Martin Luther King Drive, which was erected in 1904 and depicts George Washington on horseback during the Revolutionary War.
Washington, a slaveowner who did not free his slaves in his lifetime, fits squarely into the brand of founding Americans with a complicated and contradictory story whose public glorification was reevaluated in recent years by the city’s monuments project.
Still, Williams said, “you don’t get a fuller understanding of where we are today and why we’re in the current political climate if you begin erasing everyone who was problematic or detrimental.”
So, George remains. But now, he’s joined by a plethora of fellow Washingtons — some of whom were suggested by neighbors through a crowdsourcing effort.
“You get to first encounter these other Washingtons, and oh yeah, by the way, George,” Williams said. “So he doesn’t go away, but he’s not central anymore. I think that’s a beautiful kind of response to the challenge of how do you complicate a story? How do you expand a story?”
“Other Washingtons,” which Williams has been working on for about three years, is one piece of the city’s larger monuments project, launched in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the broader racial reckoning that followed. The committee took stock of what history is — and isn’t — represented in the city’s public spaces.
Now, six years later, the efforts of that committee are coming to fruition. In the past month, the city completed the art project honoring the victims of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot with 38 public markers; broke ground on the long-awaited memorial to victims tortured by former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge; and now, unveiled Williams’ project.
“This piece symbolizes that we can always create space for more stories, more voices, and more perspectives. The people of Chicago are the city’s greatest strength, and they deserve to be memorialized and celebrated,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said at a Thursday ceremony, attended by about 75 people.
Williams’ other high-profile projects include “Color(ed) Theory,” in which she repainted eight abandoned Englewood houses in bright jewel tones. In “Redefining Redlining,” she planted 100,000 red tulip bulbs in vacant Washington Park lots to underscore systemic disinvestment.
While the importance of color is less obvious in “Other Washingtons,” it still plays a meaningful part. In recent years, Williams has worked with chemistry students in Chicago and New Orleans to restore a pigment of blue patented by the groundbreaking African American inventor and scientist George Washington Carver, which she has dubbed “Innovation Blue.” It’s the base of the flags in her new project, which also includes shades of cream, salmon and chocolate — all pulled from a color palette developed by Carver, who is honored in the work.
“If you don’t know the story, they’re just nice colors. If you do, it’s that added layer of beauty as part of civic life,” Williams said. “So it’s there. It’s just in a way that’s a little bit different than how I normally would signal the significance of color.”
Despite the project now being unveiled to the world, Williams does not see this as the finish line. Instead, she hopes the project remains a living part of the neighborhood. And, given that the flags will be out in the elements, one that requires continued upkeep.
“We learned that flags don’t actually last that long,” Williams said. “So baked into the project is an ability for the neighborhood and the residents to own it in a way that they see fit. I’m happy for others to take ownership of the system that’s been created.”
Even if, in a year, the current 40 Washingtons are updated, their biographies will continue to live on the project’s website.
While the work may appear deceptively simple, Williams said, that too is by design.
“With every project, I try to do something where the average person can say, ‘I could have done that,’” Williams said. “You sure could. You could go buy a flagpole. You could go make a flag. You can plant some tulips. We all can play a role even if we feel powerless.”
Courtney Kueppers is an arts and culture reporter at WBEZ.