About Paul M. Farber

Paul M. Farber (he or they) is Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab. He is the host of The Statue, a podcast series from WHYY and NPR. Farber also serves as Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania.

Farber and the team at Monument Lab were the inaugural grantees of the Mellon Foundation’s “Monuments Project,” a landmark initiative to “transform the way our country’s histories are told in public spaces,” including Monument Lab’s National Monument Audit and the nationwide Re:Generation initiative. Farber has co-curated Monument Lab exhibitions and projects including Beyond Granite: Pulling Together on the National Mall (Washington DC, 2023), as well as You’re Welcome (University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2023), Staying Power (Village of Arts and Humanities, 2021), Public Iconographies (Pulitzer Foundation, 2019-2020), A Call to Peace (Military Park Newark, 2019), and Monument Lab’s original Philadelphia City Hall (2015) and citywide exhibitions (2017).

Farber's research and curatorial projects explore transnational urban history, cultural memory, and creative approaches to civic engagement. He is author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) which tells the untold story of a group of American artists and writers (Leonard Freed, Angela Davis, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Audre Lorde) who found refuge along the Berlin Wall and in Cold War Germany in order to confront political divisions back home in the United States. He is also co-editor with Ken Lum of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia (Temple University Press, 2019), a public art and history handbook designed to generate new critical ways of thinking about and building monuments. He is currently working on After Permanence: The Future of Monuments (Forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press).

In addition to his work with Monument Lab, Farber served as curator for the inaugural Artist-in-Residence Program at the Office of the District Attorney of Philadelphia (2020), keynote speaker for the Americans for the Arts national conference (2020), and Scholar in Residence at Mural Arts Philadelphia (2015–2017). He serves as an advisor to numerous monument and memorial projects including for the City of Newark and the Emmett Till Interpretive Center.

Farber has edited and contributed to numerous art and history publications. He edited a new critical edition of photographer Leonard Freed’s Made in Germany (Steidl Verlag, 2013), co-edited a special issue of the journal Criticism on HBO's series, The Wire (Wayne State University Press, 2011), and contributed essays and advised the production of numerous visual culture books including Leonard Freed's This Is the Day: The March on Washington (Getty Publications, 2013), Nathan Benn's Kodachrome Memory: American Pictures 1972-1990 (powerHouse, 2013), and Jamel Shabazz's Pieces of a Man (ArtVoices, 2016). He has been invited to lecture and lead workshops for the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work on culture has also previously appeared in The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, Al Jazeera, Museums & Social Issues, Diplomatic History, Art & the Public Sphere, Vibe, and on NPR. 

Farber earned a PhD and MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Visiting Critic: University of Pennsylvania – MFA Program and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) – Exhibition Design Seminar

Panels: National Endowment for the Humanities and Percent for Art Program – City of Philadelphia.

Board Leadership: A Long Walk Home.