Combine those three terms, and you often end up in a glorious muddle. For just one month, Friday, Aug. 18 through Sept. 18, the National Mall will be hosting “Pulling Together,” an open-air exhibition that tests what works best, or fails least, when artists, publics and monuments are brought together. “Pulling Together” makes room for monuments that talk, for instance, about Black church leaders with AIDS, about the schoolchildren who cut through Washington’s color line, and about Asian migration after America’s war in Vietnam. (One shocking absence: art that addresses the sexism undermining half the world’s humans. The show is planned as the first installment in “Beyond Granite,” a series of temporary public projects led by the Trust for the National Mall with the National Capital Planning Commission and the National Park Service.

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Persons: Paul Farber, Salamishah Tillet, Lincoln, Farber Organizations: Art, AIDS, Trust, National Capital Planning Commission, National Park Service, Rutgers University, The New York Times, Mellon Foundation Locations: Vietnam, Philadelphia