ARLINGTON, VA.- Mixed-media artist Nekisha Durrett presents her new monumental artwork Queen City, a 35 foot sculpture that includes the work of 17 ceramic artists and commemorates the history of the vibrant community that was destroyed for the construction of the Pentagon in the 1940s. Queen City, which stands less than a mile from the Pentagon campus, is part of the larger Metropolitan Park redevelopment project in Arlington, VA, which officially opened to the public on June 17. The large-scale, permanent public artwork invites the public to relearn the erased history of a historically-black community that was destroyed for the construction of the Pentagon. The artwork is open to the public from sunrise to sunset.

“The beauty and potential of this place was overlooked,” said Nekisha Durrett. “When Queen City was destroyed, so too was the potential of what this community could accomplish as a whole. This sculpture is a gesture toward bringing this community together again and making visible the splendor that is this community’s legacy.”

Queen City was a Black, self-sustaining neighborhood that thrived for 40 years before it was demolished in 1941 to make way for the Pentagon and related road construction. This resulted in 903 individuals losing their homes with almost no notice, resulting in economic hardship and a shrinking housing stock. Queen City is a 35 feet tall, well-like tower structure in Metropolitan Park, Arlington, VA that peers over trees and architecture to mark the site of what existed before.

Queen City aims to invite the public and to relearn the erased history of the historically Black neighborhood. As part of the project, Durrett commissioned 17 Black ceramists from Washington DC, California, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Georgia, Connecticut, Missouri, Florida, Minnesota, and Michigan to make 903 ceramic teardrop vessels that signify the 903 individuals of Queen City who were displaced. In building this community, Durrett encourages the legacy of Queen City to live on in spite of its erasure.

“I have become incredibly concerned about the forgotten history of Queen City. Eminent domain as it was done to us was illegal. It’s intended to build bridges, schools, and things to enhance the community. All it did was destroy ours. It destroyed the [spirit] of people – demolished our churches, businesses, and aspirations,” says William Vollin, former Queen City resident. “Through this sculpture, we are being memorialized and remembered forever. It will go out like a beacon light to this county, to the state, to the country, and even the world to say that eminent domain and what they did to Black people all over this country was unacceptable. I know that the people who lived through this, many of them gone, will look down smiling, knowing they were not forgotten.”

Community partners of this project include Arlington Arts, Black Heritage Museum of Arlington, Arlington Historical Society, and Center for Local History at Arlington Public Library. Queen City will be part of the permanent collection of Arlington Public Art.

“Arlington Public Art is delighted to welcome Nekisha Durrett’s Queen City into our permanent collection,” said Angela Anderson Adams, Director of Arlington Public Art. “Our Program regularly invites artists to research and reveal local history in their public art projects, as Durrett has done so poignantly. Along with artwork by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle and Aurora Robson, a selection guided by art consultants Via Partnership, we envision Metropolitan Park and National Landing in Arlington County as a destination for the very best in public art.”

FOR FREEDOMS

For Freedoms is an artist-led organization that models and increases creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action. We work with artists and organizations to center the voices of artists in public discourse, expand what participation in a democracy looks like, and reshape conversations about politics.

NEKISHA DURRETT

Nekisha Durrett is a mixed-media artist who employs the visual language of mass media to bring forward histories that objects, places, and words embody, but are not often celebrated. Her expansive practice includes public art, social practice, installation, painting, sculpture and design. Through deep research and material investigation, Durrett finds historical traces in the present that are filled with stories easily overlooked. Her work contemplates biases and the unreliability of memory, as information is filtered over time. Durrett illuminates individual and collective histories of Black life and imagination, addressing her own younger self and the stories she wished she had learned. She is the Howard University Social Justice Consortium Artist-in-Residence, and a finalist for the 2023 Janet and Walter Sondheim Art Prize. Durrett has recently been awarded the commission for the ARCH Project at Bryn Mawr College in partnership with Monument Lab.

ARLINGTON PUBLIC ART

Arlington Public Art is a program of Arlington Cultural Affairs, a division of Arlington Economic Development (AED) that delivers public activities and programs as Arlington Arts. Our mission is to create, support, and promote the arts, connecting artists and community to reflect the diversity of Arlington. We do this by providing material support to artists and arts organizations in the form of grants, facilities, and technical resources; integrating award-winning public art into our built environment; and presenting high quality performing, literary, visual, and new media programs across the County.