Morally Charged Art Objects in Public Spaces

The Ten Commandments monuments, set on low concrete plinths, are carved from granite in a traditional form, reference the iconic biblical tablets, and represent a particular moral agenda. In terms of their interaction with their site, they belong to a category that artist Robert Irwin describes in his 1985 essay “Being and Circumstance,” as “site dominant,” the most traditional, basic form of sculpture:

"[Such] work embodies the classical tenets of permanence, transcendent and historical content, meaning, purpose; the art-object either rises out of, or is the occasion for, its ‘ordinary’ circumstances – monuments, historical figures, murals, etc. These ‘works of art’ are recognized, understood and evaluated by referencing their content, purpose, placement, familiar form, materials, techniques, skills, etc."¹ 

Although Irwin was not writing with these particular monuments in mind, it makes sense for an object with a moral, didactic aim to fall into this category. Sally Promey, a scholar who bridges the fields of Art History and Religious Studies, contends that:

Religious displays often seek to exercise control of interpretive possibilities by the inclusion of easily legible and widely recognizable symbols and images pared down to their most basic elements. Display thus frequently and purposefully distances itself from the sorts of complexities often required of ‘art’ in order to retain a higher degree of control over meaning (Promey 327-28).

These monuments certainly represent such an effort to make their message as legible as possible, and thus may distance themselves from certain forms of art, as Promey writes, but Irwin reminds us that they do belong nonetheless to a certain traditional category of art in the particular way they engage their site and audience.

As for how these monuments engage the public space, we can look to some interviews with some members of the Faribault community and their reflections on the monument that stands in front of the Thomas Scott Buckham Memorial Library.

One community member, who wished to remain anonymous, and desired to refrain from personal reflections, spoke instead to her understanding of the community’s reaction to the statue:

Well, I have heard people, and like I said, I really don’t have a personal opinion either way…I’ve heard some people say that it’s a historical artifact. I’ve heard some people say that it’s included in the Book, you know, the Bible. Or, you know, the Hebrew text or and even in the Koran. So, and I’ve heard people say it’s a piece of art, so, you know, different people have different ideas about it.

Considering that the Ten Commandments statue was presented in 1957 as a symbol of common interfaith values among Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish traditions, it is interesting that viewers today, at least in this instance, strive to incorporate the growing Muslim community into the interfaith audience to which it speaks. Faribault, and Minnesota in general, is experiencing an influx of Muslim immigrants, and this quotation speaks in part to a desire for civic spaces to be accessible to community members of all backgrounds.

When asked about whether there is anyone who feels strongly about the monument in the Faribault community, one way or the other, they responded:

I think that possibly long-time residents might feel very strongly in a positive way towards it. However I have had Somali neighbors say that we are all people of the Book. So, I really have never had negative comments too much.

On the other hand, another community member, Paul J. Peanasky, the Buckham Center Director of the Faribault Parks and Recreation Department (the complex in front of which the monument stands), reacted thus:

In a city with 95% Christians, I don’t see anything wrong with having a monument that expresses Christian values.

He cited its general inoffensiveness to the public due to a lack of community complaints and the fact that it is even less of a problem for those excluded from its cultural message than it is for Christians:

The only people who complain are not those of a minority religious background in our community. Usually it’s people from a Christian background who want their separation of Church and State that they were raised on.

And yet he, too noted its desired interfaith inclusivity through its visual symbolism. In speaking about the Ten Commandments, he articulated a sentiment that has been expressed by those who have rallied around such monuments in Minnesota and elsewhere in the United States:

I think that it represents many different religious backgrounds because it’s got all the different religious symbols all over it, so it doesn’t just represent the Christian religion. I don’t know who thought of that, but they really thought ahead. Some lawyer, probably.

It seems, from these comments, that this newly diversifying community is dealing with changes to the public demographic and thus to changes in the way the use of public space has to be negotiated. As Promey writes:

A number of factors contribute to reactions of ambivalence about the public display of religion. Prominent among these are, first, the recognition that religion rarely happens ‘in general,’ that it usually occurs in some particular or sectarian manifestation (and often with an equally particular and sectarian set of truth claims); second, a historical and practical inclination to count religion as something people do or ought to do in private; and third, an understanding of ‘public’ display that implicates images and objects in government or civic facilities, at the initiative of civic agencies, or making some use of public funds (Promey 306-07).

As we can see from the above comments from the anonymous community member, there is an impulse to see the display as interfaith and inclusive as possible, corresponding to Promey’s first concern about the generally sectarian nature of religious displays. This is connected to her second claim about the desire for religion to be private: marking these monuments as simply historical pieces that have since been positively incorporated into the fabric of the community, potentially lessens the indiscretion of a public, sectarian religious monument. Instead, as historical objects, some of their religious tone could be seen as having been removed.

Indeed, this is exactly the stance that was put forth in the Van Orden v. Perry case, which contested a similar Ten Commandments monument positioned in front of the Texas Capitol. In this case, the swing vote, Justice Stephen Breyer, asserted that the iconic nature of the monuments and their placement “in the park of the Texas Capitol among a disparate collection of secular monuments…subordinat[ed] its religious import to a predominantly ‘moral message reflecting the historical ‘ideals’ of Texans’ (Van Orden: 702)” (Kayman 20). Breyer assumes, in this case, that you can evacuate the religious content of a monument. Questions remain, of course, as to whether this is actually so, but the response of the anonymous Faribault community member speaks to a similar impulse to regard the historical nature of the monument as detracting from its religious content.

As for Promey’s third concern, about the appropriation of government funds for the display of such a monument, this may seem to be circumvented by the fact that it was given as a gift by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and thus not supported directly by taxpayers’ dollars. However, as Promey points out, the very fact of its inclusion in front of a civic complex (along with other public displays of Christianity, such as the Jesus statue and the yearly Nativity display) does indicate some normative values. As she writes:

Though few assume that all public displays of religion are publicly funded, consideration of the ‘appropriate’ display of (largely sectarian) religion gets conceptually and categorically drawn into conversations about government endorsement or complicity—set off, philosophically and legally, against cultural pluralism and the establishment clause of the First Amendment (Promey 306-07).

Importantly, their relationship to the piece is informed by the knowledge that just a few hours to the north, in Duluth, Minnesota, an identical piece was removed in a controversial court case in 2005, and that their monument has the looming threat of a similar fate if public discourse veers away from its historical legacy and focuses on its religious content. There are no plans for such a removal of this monument, and this monument’s placement in front of a library and community center, as opposed to a courthouse, certainly communicates a different, and perhaps less controversial message.

So how should we read this Ten Commandments monument? Community members appear to be negotiating its interpretation as an artistic, historical, and religious object in need of some legitimization for its inclusion in public space, and a certain ambivalence about its identity as a sectarian religious display.