Abstract
In June 1994, His Majesty the King Carl XVI Gustaf’s The Environmental Monument was inaugurated in Stockholm. The Environmental Monument was not created for commemorative reasons; instead, it was meant to disseminate information about the environment and function as a reminder of our common responsibility for the present and future environment. The Environmental Monument signifies a major shift in thinking about monumentality. This article examines this shift by exploring how The Environmental Monument relates to other monuments and further sets out to place The Environmental Monument in an art-historical context. By describing and analyzing the history of The Environmental Monument, and by examining the physical monument, including its location, form, and material, as well as its function, this article shows that the monument both aligns with and simultaneously contradicts historical and contemporary paradigms of monuments, which makes it difficult to characterize. Finally, this article introduces the term “digital monument” to characterize a type of public art that emerged in the mid-1990s and consisted of physical monuments made of enduring material and incorporating interactive digital technology.
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