About a decade after Zyahna Bryant, then a 15-year-old high school student, led the push to remove Confederate imagery from Charlottesville, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center presented three proposals for Swords into Plowshares, a project created to repurpose the bronze from the melted-down statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
JSAAHC took possession of the statue in 2021, but rather than displaying it in a museum or keeping it locked away in storage, executive director Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, a Swords into Plowshares co-founder and University of Virginia associate professor, had a different idea: Invite artists to create a new public art installation with the recycled material.
Each design is intended to turn “historical trauma into an artistic expression of democratic values and inclusive aspirations.” The studios proposed lengthy community engagement plans, outlining collaborations with longtime local activists and descendants of enslaved families to ensure that whichever installation is chosen will not simply be a static monument…