Kinfolk’s monuments humanize the history

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“Folks like Samuel Anderson, who was one of the early in investors in Weeksville, which was a free Black community [in Brooklyn],” he adds. “That was one of the first monuments that we created.”

Kinfolk’s Chief Strategy Officer Micah Milner adds, “We’re bringing the app to the community in the places where they’re already attending, where they’re looking to learn, and we’re trying to enrich that experience.”

—they make it more concrete, “so you can really empathize,” Milner says. “That’s a huge hurdle for community organizations who are trying to talk about history that a lot of people feel detached from, just by time itself.”

Recent projects include digital monuments phone number list that celebrate Seneca Village, the Young Lords, and the early Black abolitionist David Ruggles. Going forward, Kinfolk is lining up more collaborations with museums, historical sites, and schools and is laying the groundwork for community partnerships and monuments in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Alabama, and New Orleans. In the first half of 2023 it will also have the singular honor of being the only digital tech company to be included in “Architecture Now: New York, New Publics,” an exhibition on reimagining public space, taking place at the Museum of Modern Art.

Two people are viewable at a distance. They are standing next to a historical marker. A staircase leads up to the historical marker.
Kinfolk is expanding its digital collection of augmented reality monuments, creating more opportunities to humanize and empathize with history.
The team recognizes that while physical monuments may possess a gravitas that AR monuments may lack, virtual commemorations have the benefit of adaptability—information can be added to them as knowledge bases grow. Their mobility is also a plus: Kinfolk and its technology can go to and be present in the sites where conversations about American history are most vital.

“The news of the current events is really just providing us a roadmap onto where we really are needed the most,” he says. “That’s why we want to look at other places in the South, like New Orleans and Richmond, cause that’s where a lot of these conversations are happening, and that’s where people are actively looking and advocating for solutions to their spaces of being cluttered with Confederate monuments.”

“Augmented reality is not a replacement for physical monuments,” reflects Milner. “It’s an extension of that. It’s a playground for the imagination to see what could exist in physical space.”