Ralston Hartness- Context and Living Memorials at VMI

I thoroughly enjoyed our time at VMI today. Although I have walked through the post before and spent a little time in the museum (not nearly enough, though), I did not really feel like I had explored or seen much of their campus. I certainly had passed by many of their memorials before, but had not been aware of the context of them or just how much they mean to the VMI community. That was my biggest takeaway from what Col. Gibson presented to us today- across all spaces and memorials on post. Col. Gibson continued to remind us and to mention the importance of context, not only in memorializing events and people, but also in having a thoughtful dialogue about those memorials that may be coming in to distaste or debate. I found this takeaway particularly compelling in light of what we read about living memorials a few nights ago. It seems to me that the biggest dreamers of what living memorials could be, as Shanken puts it, would have loved to know that Col. Gibson and the VMI community are preserving and illuminating the context alongside beautiful, functional living spaces. That is why I included the image above and below, the former being their Memorial Garden and the latter being the Daniels Courtyard.

Although I was entering in to those spaces feeling very skeptical of their memorialization of their respective people, I realized that this feeling was coming out of my cultural experience at W&L, and, dare I say, my forgetfulness and our community's forgetfulness of much of our institutional history. It feels that VMI is actively trying to preserve their cultural and institutional history in powerful and effective ways, and, in doing so, they are able to create meaningful and practical memorial spaces.