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Mount Rushmore, originally known as Six Grandfathers, gets its own biography, plus Sarah Bond on the way museums approach polychromy and whiteness.
At its best, an artist’s biography lingers long after we’ve read it, continually reshaping our orientation to a creator and his life. But what might a biography of a mountain look like?
Author Matthew Davis wanted to answer the question of one of the most prominent symbols of American nationalism: Mount Rushmore, also known by its original Lakota name, Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe or Six Grandfathers. It reflects some of the same questions that led Irvin Weathersby Jr., a scientist and writer, to visit landmarks across the United States for his book In open contempt: confronting white supremacy in art and public space (2025).
Weathersby Jr. draws on his own experiences in his discussion of Davis’s refreshing approach to art history and monumentalism, while scholar Sarah Bond considers the long-awaited shift in museums toward a reckoning with polychromy and the myth of whiteness. Read their reflections below for a new way to look at these monuments – and to understand the biographies we make of them.
—Lakshmi Rivera Amin, editor-in-chief
The Noah Davis Collection from David Zwirner Books
On the occasion of Noah Davis’s retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, discover a beautifully produced record of his oeuvre from David Zwirner Books. Bringing together large-scale surveys and close readings of individual works, these titles highlight both the power of his paintings and the impact of his visionary work.
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From our critics
How white elites strip ancient art of its color
The publication of Chroma represents a significant shift among museums toward recognizing polychromy and its entanglement with white supremacy. | Sara Bond
Chroma: sculpture in color from antiquity to today (2025), edited by Seán Hemingway, Sarah Lepinski and Vinzenz Brinkmann
Demolition of the facade of Mount Rushmore
In Biography of a Mountainauthor Matthew Davis deftly weaves together interviews and stories that reveal so much more than a linear narrative of the monument’s history. | Irvin Weathersby Jr.
A Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Significance of Mount Rushmore (2025) by Matthew Davis
From the Archives
The regal, bloody and fiery history of the color red
Michel Pastoureau’s book covers the complicated history of the color red, from the royal hue of kings to the scandalous hue of whores. | Allison Meier
The wonderful history of colors, from beige to heliotrope
These stories about the origins of shades make for a colorful book. | Claire Voon
ICYMI
8 art books to read in February
Edmonia Lewis’s groundbreaking sculptural practice, the birth of modernism in Montmartre, Kaylene Whiskey’s luminous paintings and Gainsborough’s seductive fashion portraits are among our favorite reads this month. | Natalie Haddad, Lakshmi Rivera Amin, Lisa Yin Zhang
