This book documents the four-year Lion Monument 21 program marking the
bicentenary of Lucerne's world-famous Lion Monument.
The famous Lion Monument in Lucerne, located in a park in the heart of
the city, commemorates the Swiss Guards in the service of the French
King Louis XVI who fell in the storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris
on August 10, 1792. The monument, hewn directly into the rockface
according to a design by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, was
inaugurated on August 10, 1821. Together with the nearby Glacier Garden,
it is today one of the Swiss city's major tourist attractions.
To mark the memorial's bicentenary, the Kunsthalle Lucerne launched the
Lion Monument 21 program of exhibitions, performances, podiums, and
interdisciplinary events. Between 2017 and 2022, they considered the
monument from an artistic standpoint. The art projects demonstrated a
wide range of artistic stances and related the monument to a variety of
themes. This book documents the entire project through some four hundred
images, texts, and conversations. It also constitutes a socially
committed reference book for the artistic contextualization of
monuments, which records and reflects on the insights of the Lion
Monument 21 project.
