Monuments and memorial collections often rely on strategies akin to data visualization to convey the scale of traumatic events. From Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial to installations like Ai Weiwei’s Remembering, these designs compress overwhelming quantities of information into confined spaces, creating affective experiences that facilitate understanding. This article introduces the concept of “data monuments”—commemorative structures or installations that visualize large amounts of information to transmit complex or distressing histories—and examines memorial collecting as a subcategory of this practice. Drawing on examples from Holocaust memorials, the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Soil Collection Project, and digital humanities initiatives such as Slave Voyages, the article interrogates the ethical and affective dimensions of quantifying loss. It argues that while data-driven memorials can foster engagement and remembrance, they also risk trivializing or reenacting trauma, particularly when appropriated data are reused without critical reflection. By situating memorial practices within the broader discourse of data visualization, this study calls for intentional, humanistic approaches to designing physical and digital commemorations that resist desensitization and promote justice-oriented remembrance. Read the full chapter here.

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