US Presidents in Myth, Memory, and Art

Photographer Colleen Mullins and art historian Jennifer Wingate discuss their new books about presidential commemoration.

An innovative student run publisher, COMPOSIT Press, published a 2026 trade edition of Mullins' 2020 artist's book, Expositions are the Timekeepers of Progress. Mullins' book, which explores the layered histories and afterlives of a President McKinley memorial, was shortlisted for the 2026 Arles Author Book Award.

Wingate's book, At Home with Political Portraits: Photographs of the Domestic Display of US Presidents, examines how photographers have engaged with portraits of FDR, JFK and Obama on display in people's homes.

While Mullins' book is about taking down presidents, and Wingate's is about about putting up presidents, they both address the vagaries of personal and collective memory and the sometimes talismatic properties of presidential portrait statuary and photographs.