Beneath threatening storm clouds, 13 people carried long, silver wind chimes up the tallest hill in Benton Park one April morning. They took turns climbing an aluminum ladder and hanging the chimes onto a cord tied between two trees.
As they completed the piece, an installation by musician Raven Chacon, onlookers applauded.
“This is from a series of works that are meant to bring the public out into the streets,” Chacon said.
His work is part of Counterpublic, a massive exhibition of public art meant to do just that. The works are placed at locations throughout the city of St. Louis, mainly along Jefferson Avenue. It runs through July 16.
Artists explored social issues relevant to each location.
The siting of Chacon’s piece — a park named for Thomas Hart Benton, 19th century champion of westward expansion — is key to its meaning. It’s a temporary anti-monument, hanging in opposition to the spirit of the Gateway Arch, which celebrates that expansion.
“To be able to put this musical instrument here in the park as a kind of counter to that history — I'm happy that I can contribute to that discussion,” said Chacon, a member of Navajo Nation who last year became the first Native American to win a Pulitzer Prize. He’ll present another piece in July as part of the exhibition’s closing weekend.
A growing effort
This is the second iteration of Counterpublic, which organizers intend to prese. This year’s version greatly expands on the inaugural show in 2019, organized by the Luminary. Organizers say the show cost several million dollars to mount but declined to give a precise amount. A nonprofit foundation, led by the Luminary’s co-founder James McAnally, split off from the Cherokee Street arts center in 2021 to focus exclusively on Counterpublic.
The curators of Counterpublic 2023 are Allison Glenn, Diya Vij, Katherine Simóne Reynolds, Risa Puleo and New Red Order, a collective of Native filmmakers.
Beyond their general intent to expand the scope of traditional public art and include viewpoints that previously have been excluded, curators identified three specific goals. They aim to help return control of Sugarloaf Mound to the Osage Nation, memorialize Mill Creek Valley and grow the capacity of the Griot Museum of Black History.
Toward those ends, Counterpublic 2023 includes an installation by Osage artists Anita and Nokosee Fields adjacent to Sugarloaf Mound. Counterpublic leaders are readying a campaign to purchase the land and return it to the Osage people. St. Louis-based artist Damon Davis created a permanent monument outside CityPark that remembers the predominantly Black neighborhood Mill Creek Valley, which sat there before it was demolished in the 1950s and ’60s. Architect David Adjaye, whose firm designed the Smithsonian National Museum of African American Art and Culture, is contributing his first piece of public art, next to the Griot: earthworks made of local soil, packed tightly with a traditional Ghanaian method.
“Our ethos is to go beyond art and the art world and understand: Where does that actually connect with change? I think that's such a big question for St. Louis,” McAnally said after Counterpublic announced this year’s exhibition lineup in March.
Sole surviving landmark
Anita Fields designed 40 platforms, based on the type often used during Osage gatherings. They are brightly colored, adorned with ribbons and ceramic tiles that reference elements of Osage culture and history: beadwork patterns, corn, bits of the Osage language.
The installation sits next to Sugarloaf Mound, the only remaining earthwork in St. Louis created by Native inhabitants before the arrival of white settlers. Although St. Louis is still sometimes known as Mound City, developers destroyed the other mounds, in many cases to build homes for prominent citizens. Some mounds were cleared for the 1904 World’s Fair.
“When people sit on these platforms, they can think about the history that happened here. I would encourage them to look it up — especially if you're from here — to understand whose land you're on, the history that happened here, the original stories,” Fields said.
Osage Nation owns the very top of Sugarloaf Mound but not the lower portions, where houses are built onto it. Counterpublic leaders plan to mount a fundraising campaign to purchase the rest of the land there and turn it back to the Osage.
“The land holds a memory of the civilizations and the people who were there before,” Fields said while putting finishing touches on her platforms. “This land that we're on, this is one of the links to our past, our future and to now.”
Her son, musician Nokosee Fields, composed an accompanying audio collage. It includes sounds from ceremonial dances and a recording of his great-aunt speaking in the Osage language.
Closing with a flourish
Counterpublic winds up in mid-July with a closing weekend of events.
They include a program by Sugarloaf Mound with a water ceremony led by Anita Fields, a performance by the Wah.zha.zhe Puppet Theatre and a conversation between Fields and Dr. Andrea Hunter, also of Osage Nation.
Adjaye’s earthen sculpture will be unveiled July 15 at the Griot, with a block party to follow. White Mountain Apache musician Laura Ortman will perform a solo set that afternoon at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, inspired by the work of Blackfoot artist Faye Heavyshield, which is now on view there.
Counterpublic co-curators New Red Order also will team with Cahokia Intertribal Noise Symposium to present a two-night event at the Greenfinch Theater and Dive featuring the work of more than 30 artists and performers.
Curators aim to suggest ways forward for St. Louis that include reckoning with its past.
“An undercurrent that runs throughout a lot of our projects is really telling history in public, in a way that we can remember and not repeat what happened," McAnally said. “Any kind of envisioning of a future for this region is rooted in really accounting for and marking what has happened here over its history.”
Hear Counterpublic Director James McAnally and native artist and filmmaker Zack Khalil discuss how art can be a useful tool to spark reflections about Indigenous history on "St. Louis on the Air." Listen to the conversation on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast or Stitcher or by clicking the play button below.
