Renée Ater

“Community Conversation: The Power of Public Monuments and Why They Matter,” January 9, 2019, Tremont Temple, Boston, Massachusetts.

Panel discussion with Renée Ater, DeRay Mckesson (civil rights activist), F. Sheffield Hale (President and CEO of Atlanta History Center), and Derrick Z. Jackson (moderator).

Sponsored by the Friends of the Public Garden: https://friendsofthepublicgarden.org/2019/01/09/
january-9-2019-a-community-conversation-the-
power-of-public-monuments-and-why-they-matter/

“Monuments, Slavery, and the Digital Humanities.” Public lecture at Brown University Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, April 30, 2019. https://blogs.brown.edu/libnews/renee-ater/

In this public lecture, I discussed the processes and challenges of creating a digital project/publication about the memorialization of slavery. Her project, Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past: Race, Memorialization, Public Space, and Civic Engagement, investigates how we visualize, interpret, and engage the slave past through contemporary monuments created for public spaces. Through an examination of monuments in the South, Midwest, and Northeast, she tells a diverse and multi-layered story about our engagement with slavery in the present. Arranged thematically, I considered six digital case studies that include monuments to the Transatlantic slave trade and the Middle Passage, slavery and the university, resistance to enslavement, Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, black soldiers and the Civil War, and emancipation and freedom.

A series of ten short videos about monuments, slavery and meaning.

Watch videos here: https://www.choices.edu/scholar/renee-ater/

Conversation with Steven Zucker at the site of the African Burial Ground National Monument, New York City.

https://smarthistory.org/african-burial-ground-national-monument/, released: August 1, 2020.

“From March 4 through August 26, 2020, UNLADYLIKE2020 will release 26 short films and a broadcast hour on PBS American Masters profiling diverse and little-known American women from the turn of the 20th century, and contemporary women who follow in their footsteps.”

An eleven-minute film about Meta Warrick Fuller, sculptor and poet, traces her life from Philadelphia to Paris to Framingham, Massachusetts.

Watch film on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/she-was-trailblazing-african-american-sculptor-s2wd1i/14031/

or

Watch film at UNLADYLIKE2020: https://unladylike2020.com/profile/meta-warrick-fuller/

"Police Brutality, the Slave Past, and Digital Remembrance," Interview with Dr. Kaylee Anderson, The Collective for Radical Death Studies, July 23, 2020.

"In this Collective for Radical Death Studies event, visual culture historian Kaylee P. Alexander interviews Dr. Renée Ater, a public scholar and historian, about her Instagram-based memorial “I Can’t Breathe.” Walking listeners through her project, which commemorates unarmed black and brown folks killed by the police in the United States, Dr. Ater also addresses the importance of naming and processes of remote grieving during the COVID-19 crisis."

Listen Here

“Community Conversation: The Power of Public Monuments in a time of Racial Reckoning” August 2020, Friends of the Public Garden. Virtual conversation on Zoom.

Conversation between Renée Ater and David W. Blight (historian and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University), moderated by Karen Holmes Ward (WCVB Director of Public Affairs and Host of “CityLine”)

Sponsored by the Friends of the Public Garden:

Presentations by Renée Ater, Brown University; Crystal Feimster, Yale University; Juliet Hooker, Brown University; and Daniel Magaziner, Yale University.

In the summer of 2020, challenges to race, memorialization, and icons of power predominated ongoing social, cultural, and political action and art. These scholars will examine how social movements have redefined public space, articulated social justice issues through art, and defied long-standing national icons and monuments. What’s at stake in these movements and gestures and how do art and politics work together to reimagine social space, belonging, and power?

“Future Histories: The Case for Creative Commemoration” was held on September. 29, 2020. A panel conversation among artists, designers, and educators, it explored how creative commemoration can help us see the past and present in a new light—and chart a path toward more just futures. Conversation with Renée Ater, Visiting Associate Professor Brown University; Becci Davis, Visual Artist and Educator; Adjunct Lecturer in Visual Art at Brown University; and Mel Isidor, Principal Designer at Isidor Studio.

“Future Histories” was part of “Public Art, Public Memory” series sponsored by MAPC Metro Boston. This discussion series explores the role that planners, artists, and community leaders can play in cultivating more just and inclusive public spaces through public art and collective memory. Learn more here https://www.mapc.org/resource-library....

This lecture is a part of Falling and Rising: Public Monuments & Cultural Heritage in a Time of Protest, a series of interviews produced by the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History and "The Athenaeum Review" at the University of Texas at Dallas with art historians, historians, artists, and archaeologists that examine the current cultural moment of renewed attention to the role of public art.

Conversation between Renée Ater, Brent Leggs (Director, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, NTHP) and Ada Pinkston (multimedia artist, educator, cultural organizer).

The controversy surrounding Confederate statues and other contested monuments that celebrate slave owners, imperialism, and white settler colonialism have been highlighted in recent months. Although activists have advocated for the removal of these monuments for years, the racial unrest this summer has brought these issues to the forefront of the cultural heritage sector and greater society as community activists empower themselves to take down such monuments all over the world. This has caused conflicted feelings in some conservators who want to support racial justice in public spaces, but who have been traditionally taught to always prioritize the preservation of outdoor sculpture and monuments. Conservators may also be conflicted if their employers task them with the care of contested monuments, calling professional ethics into question. At the crux of the matter are questions surrounding who is valued in our society and who gets to make decisions in regard to public spaces and the interpretation of history. Competing values surrounding the removal of contested monuments will be explored with panelists including artists, historians, and preservation professionals.

Sponsored by FAIC, the AIC Equity & Inclusion Committee, and Emerging Conservation Professionals Network.

In this episode, Anna Gasha, a Ph.D. student in GSAPP’s Historic Preservation program, speaks with Dr. Renée Ater, an art historian of 19th and 20th Century American art. Ater taught in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland until her retirement in July 2017. Her research and writing have focused on the intersection of race, monument building, and national identity. She is currently researching, designing, and writing a digital project called Contemporary Monuments to the Slave Past: Race, Memorialization, Public Space, and Civic Engagement, at slaverymonuments.org.

Ater discusses the importance of providing accessible resources for the general public to learn about public monuments. Ater hopes that digital scholarship projects like her own will help audiences become more informed citizens familiar with the political implications of symbols used within public spaces.

Access Interview on Soundcloud.

As symbols of collective memory, monuments, memorials, and even song lyrics, have had very different meanings to those who create them and those who inherit them. Join a conversation about national identity, changed significance, and reinterpretation with historians Dr. Renée Ater, associate professor emerita of American art at the University of Maryland, and Dr. Billy Coleman, postdoctoral fellow in early American history at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri as well as Ada Pinkston, multimedia artist and 2020 Monument Lab fellow. Moderated by David Armenti, MCHC Director of Education.

This lecture examined Douglas’ 1935 painting Noah’s Ark, which is on view at Wichita Art Museum in the 2022 exhibition American Art Deco: Designing for the People, 1918–1939. Douglas illustrated poetry by James Weldon Johnson in 1927. This presentation considers Aaron Douglas’ painting Noah’s Ark in the context of Johnson’s God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, his 1927 book of poems based on folk sermons. After creating the illustrations for Johnson, Douglas returned to the imagery from God’s Trombones in several of his most important oil paintings, including Noah’s Ark. Exploring the collaboration between Douglas and Johnson, I argue that the artist and the author created a vibrant Christian iconography from a uniquely Black perspective.

“Historical Depictions of Slavery,” Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, Vermont, April 22, 2022.

Discussion the artworks referenced in "Roberto Visani: Form/Reform," an exhibit of cardboard sculptures created in response to historical depictions of slavery for the museum as well as a conversation with Visani.

“Conversations with Friends: The Shaw 54th Memorial with Renée Ater.” December 2023. YouTube, uploaded February 8, 2023.

Conversation with Renée Ater and Liz Vizza, president of the Friends of the Public Garden, about the newly restored memorial.

This gallery talk was presented at the The John Rhoden Catalogue Symposium at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in February 2024.

The symposium launched the exhibition catalog, Determined To Be: The Sculpture of John Rhoden, a publication that accompanies the first comprehensive retrospective of twentieth century African American sculptor, John Rhoden (1916-2001), curated by Dr. Brittany Webb, the Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of Twentieth Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection.

Conversation with Dr. Beth Harris at the site of Meta Warrick Fuller’s Emancipation in Boston, Massachusetts.

https://smarthistory.org/meta-warrick-fuller-emancipation/, released: June 18, 2025.

This virtual talk was presented at the “Modeling Resistance: The Art and Legacy of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller” Symposium at Reid Hall, Columbia Global Paris Center, May 2026.

Program description:

“In 1899, a young sculptor from Philadelphia arrived in Paris to study art. She came with strong letters of recommendation, a scholarship behind her, and the support of painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, who had promised her family to look after her. Upon arrival, she was turned away from the American Girls' Art Club — the building now known as Reid Hall — because she was Black. Undeterred, Meta Vaux Warrick went on to win the admiration of Auguste Rodin and French art dealer and galerist Georges Petit. She also exhibited with the American Woman’s Art Association and at the Salon des Beaux-Arts, and later became one of the most important American sculptors of her generation.”

“This public evening event, held in the very building that once excluded her, celebrates Fuller's remarkable life and lasting legacy. Scholars and curators will present on her Paris years and her trajectory as an artist in the United States, followed by a panel discussion with curators from the Danforth Museum — caretaker of the Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Special Collection — the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and David Fuller, Meta Vaux's grandson.”

Atelier Podcast:

The Making of a Sculptor with Renée Ater, Spotify, July 2026: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4g4pBR1g2t9fgCDvK2Ytr3?si=1YFAx0iUTa6XTCo0WLYNWA&nd=1&dlsi=a8852310e7bc45f0