Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth About the Past
A Talk with Robert Bevan
Penn Museum
Friday, Sep. 15, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm ET
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This event is sponsored by the Pogo Foundation and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center Advisory Board.
In Monumental Lies, Robert Bevan examines the weaponization and manipulation of the past in culture wars around the globe. This talk considers monuments, architecture, and cities as material evidence of human history, reflecting on how our understanding of this heritage impacts our lives.
A book signing by the author will follow immediately after his lecture.
Buy TicketsAbout the Speaker
Robert Bevan
Robert Bevan is a London-based author and journalist writing on architecture, heritage, and cities. He is the author of Monumental Lies: Culture Wars and the Truth about the Past (Verso), a book of the year for the Financial Times and The Art Newspaper. His previous book, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War was described as “ground-breaking” by the New York Review of Books. He has also co-authored and contributed to other books on architecture, including Common Ground, the reader accompanying the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Bevan is the architecture critic for the Evening Standard in London and has written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, and The Economist. He is also a heritage consultant specializing in area-based, heritage-led regeneration and heritage at risk. He is a member of the Mayor of London’s Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm, the International Scientific Committee on Risk Preparedness (ICOMOS-ICORP), and Blue Shield UK, a UNESCO-related committee that addresses heritage in conflicts. He has been described as “one of the most compelling progressive voices in the heritage world” (Tribune).