Memorials to society’s skeptics

“As members of a democratic society we should regard monuments with a certain amount of suspicion,” curator Ralph Rugoff writes in the catalog of his latest exhibition at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. “They unambiguously assert that this leader was heroic, these fallen soldiers were patriots, this event should never be forgotten. Built to endure, they present a particular vision of history as though it were an inarguable and eternal truth.”

Rugoff decided to fight back. He invited an international slate of artists to submit proposals for “the type of monuments that the people of the United States need, or deserve, at this moment in history.”

The results -- drawings and models by about 60 individuals and partnerships -- are on view in “Monuments for the USA,” at the college gallery through May 14.

U.S.-born Jennifer Allora and Cuban-born Guillermo Calzadilla, who live in Puerto Rico, dreamed up “Pyramid,” a landfill of waste transformed into a pyramid-like mountain that will constantly change, grow and rot. Another team, Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian-born Ingar Dragset, who live in Berlin, designed “Monument to Short-Term Memory.” It spells the title of the work in three tiers of letters, a la Robert Indiana, while spoofing Americans’ disregard for history.

Jeffrey Vallance -- a Los Angeles-based social observer known for spicing empathy with deadpan humor -- created a “Monument to the Unrecognized Artist,” a white marble gallery furnished with empty bronze frames and pedestals. As Vallance states in handwritten text alongside his drawing, the monument is “a salute in marble and bronze to those brave souls who have fought the good fight -- yet remain unappreciated.”