Washington’s Monumental Core, Part 2: The Evolution of the National Mall

Over nearly 250 years, the National Mall has evolved into the symbolic heart of the nation’s capital, designed to express the ideals of the new republic through landscape, architecture, and monumentality. In the second program of a two-part series, Carolyn Muraskin, examines the post–World War II era, when the Mall became a space not only for remembrance but also for activism and expanding historical narratives as memorial design shifted away from heroic monumentality toward more personal forms of reflection— an evolving effort to represent an increasingly complex American story. (World Art History Certificate elective, 1/2 credit)