Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Reimagining the Cemetery as Museum | Page 9

Fagnani Monument

Dickinson, was the first memorial to be erected at Mount
Auburn. Not all memorials at Mount Auburn rise to this
level of significance, and many are smaller in scale, but
together they form an extraordinary collection of fine and
vernacular art, with particular strength in early nineteenthcentury Victorian funerary art.
Mount Auburn received a grant from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in 2013 for a twoyear initiative to research and document Mount Auburn’s
thirty significant monuments. The project gave us an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the Cemetery’s rich
historical collections and pull together diverse resources
including monument plans, correspondence with families
and monument makers, historic photographs, cemetery
guidebooks, newspapers, and journals. For the first time,
we were able to organize and make accessible a body of
historical evidence that further enhances our understanding
of Mount Auburn’s role in the rural cemetery movement
and the development of funerary art in America.
Jonathan Fairbanks, one of the foremost authorities on
American sculpture, writes that “eloquent sculpture, both
public and private, can and should still lift the human
spirit with new expressions, drawing upon the timeless
and universal theme of human mortality and memory.”1
We hope that families and visitors who come to Mount
Auburn will be inspired to look with new eyes at these
monuments, appreciating the visual language and history
of the Cemetery’s memorials as a window into our culture
and expressions of commemoration. Please join us in
reimagining the Cemetery as museum.
Jonathan Fairbanks, “Eternal Celebrations in American Memorials,” in “Remove Not the
Ancient Monument”: Public Monuments and Moral Values, ed. Donald Martin Reynolds (New
York: Routledge, 2013), 187.
1

Announcing a New Publication from the Friends of Mount Auburn
The Art of Commemoration and America’s First Rural Cemetery:
Mount Auburn’s Significant Monument Collection
Written by Melissa Banta with Meg L. Winslow. Introductory essay by David B.
Dearinger. Foreword by Dave Barnett, President and CEO of Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Published with the support of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
www.mountauburn.org/2015/the-art-of-commemoration/
This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute
of Museum and Library Services
Grant number: MA-30-13-0533-13

Bulfinch Urn
2016 Volume 1 | 7