Detail view of the Soldiers & Sailors Monument by Hadley Fruits for Landmark Columbus Foundation

The Monument Knows
Public Conversation No. 3
with Rasul Mowatt and Tiffany Tolbert

Monday, November 2, 2026
Doors open at 4:30 p.m.
Program begins at 5:00 p.m.
Hilbert Circle Theatre
45 Monument Circle, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
Free and open to the public. Advance registration required.

Join Monumental Gestures for the third public conversation of The Monument Knows, a public humanities and civic research project exploring the histories, meanings, and future possibilities of Monument Circle and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in downtown Indianapolis.

Public Conversation No. 1 asked what a monument is. No. 2 asked how the Monument is used today and what it means to the people who gather there. Public Conversation No. 3 will ask what is missing from this monument. Whose histories does the Monument hold, whose does it leave out, and what does it mean to care for a landmark as living heritage rather than as a finished object?

Rasul Mowatt, Department Head and Professor of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management in the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University, studies how cities produce public space and how race, memory, and power are written into it. He spent fifteen years on the faculty at Indiana University and serves as Research Director for The Monument Knows.

Tiffany Tolbert, Co-Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, helps lead the largest national effort to preserve places tied to Black history in the United States. She spent more than a decade at Indiana Landmarks before joining the National Trust and knows the Circle from both sides of that work.

Developed by Monumental Gestures in partnership with Merritt Chase, The Monument Knows invites residents to engage with one of Indianapolis's most iconic public spaces through conversation, research, and storytelling. The project asks a simple but deep question: What does the monument know?

This event is the third in a four-part public conversation series. Thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation, we offer it at no cost to you. Learn more at askthemonument.org.

From left: Rasul Mowatt and Tiffany Tolbert

Special Guest Biographies

Rasul Mowatt is Department Head and Professor of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management in the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University and Affiliate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. Before joining NC State in 2020, he served fifteen years on the faculty at Indiana University Bloomington in American Studies, Geography, and Recreation, Park, and Tourism Studies. His research centers on the geographies of race and violence, the animation of public space, and critical leisure studies. He is the author of The Geographies of Threat and the Production of Violence: The State and the City Between Us and co-author of Laundering Black Rage. He is a past president of the Academy of Leisure Sciences and served on the Indiana Supreme Court's Commission on Race and Gender Fairness. Mowatt is Research Director for The Monument Knows.

Tiffany Tolbert is Co-Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a position she has held since June 2026, when she was appointed alongside Erica Smith Goetz. Since 2017, the Action Fund has raised $200 million and supported more than four hundred preservation projects, making it the largest national resource dedicated to preserving sites tied to Black history in the United States. As the Action Fund's Senior Director for Preservation, Tolbert led its signature work, including restoring the Nina Simone Childhood Home, launching the HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative, and restoring and stewarding the John and Alice Coltrane Home. From 2006 to 2017, she directed the Northwest Field Office of Indiana Landmarks, and her research on Rosenwald Schools and the African American experience in Indiana has appeared in Traces, the Indiana Historical Society's magazine. A native of Montgomery, Alabama, she holds a B.A. in Political Science and History from Huntingdon College and a Master of Historic Preservation from Georgia State University.