Abstract Monument Avenue, a national historic landmark in Richmond, Virginia, has long been famous for its grand portrait monuments honouring local Civil War “heroes.” In 1996, the memorial landscape changed radically with the addition of a bronze portrait statue of Arthur Ashe, a black American who was honoured for his accomplishments as an international tennis star, an author, and a humanitarian. The location and the design of Ashe’s portrait monument generated heated debate, and its ultimate inclusion on Monument Avenue was an attempt to challenge the traditional meaning of the space as a memorial to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. In this article I trace how the racialised narrative of Monument Avenue has been constructed, challenged, upheld, and mediated throughout its long and troubled history. I begin by looking to antiquity both as a framework for understanding how statues have historically worked to construct and challenge cultural narratives and as a means of placing viewer reactions to portrait monuments in a broader historical context. Against this background, I argue that the portrait statue of Arthur Ashe ultimately failed to establish an effective counter-narrative to the traditional interpretation of Monument Avenue as a celebration of a white, Confederate past. Finally, I suggest that repeated small-scale interventions, often in the form of graffiti, have been more successful in confronting, mediating, and challenging the visual message Confederate monuments continue to embody.

中文翻译：

---

具有挑战性的叙事：亚瑟·阿什和里士满纪念碑大道上的反纪念碑实践

摘要纪念碑大道是弗吉尼亚州里士满的国家历史地标，长期以来以其纪念当地内战“英雄”的宏伟肖像纪念碑而闻名。1996 年，纪念景观发生了根本性变化，增加了亚瑟·阿什 (Arthur Ashe) 的青铜雕像，这位美国黑人因其作为国际网球明星、作家和人道主义者的成就而受到表彰。艾什肖像纪念碑的位置和设计引起了激烈的争论，最终将其纳入纪念碑大道是为了挑战该空间作为对邦联失落原因的纪念的传统意义。在这篇文章中，我追溯了纪念碑大道的种族化叙事是如何在其漫长而动荡的历史中被构建、挑战、支持和调解的。我首先将古代视为理解雕像历史上如何构建和挑战文化叙事的框架，以及将观众对肖像纪念碑的反应置于更广泛的历史背景中的一种手段。在这种背景下，我认为亚瑟·阿什的肖像雕像最终未能有效地反驳将纪念碑大道视为庆祝南方邦联过去的传统解释。最后，我建议反复的小规模干预，通常以涂鸦的形式，在对抗、调解和挑战邦联纪念碑继续体现的视觉信息方面更为成功。