As of this writing in mid-November, “American MONUMENT” by lauren woods has been “paused” (not withdrawn) by the artist. It is a gesture meant to protest the firing of Kimberli Meyer, director of the University Art Museum at California State University in Long Beach and an instrumental collaborator in woods’s project, only days before the show opened. The 25 turntables on white plinths still stand at attention, formed into a grid in the gallery’s center. Under other circumstances, however, these would have borne 25 vinyl records which, when the viewer lowered the needle, would have played audio related to the last moments in the lives of 25 black Americans killed by the police: body cam recordings, smartphone streams, documents read by actors, and audio from court. A set of 25 metal boxes on metal tables and shelves would have contained facsimile case materials related to each slaying. It was always going to be an austere, formal show. Now it’s assuredly formalist. The boxes, open on the table or closed and put away on shelves, are uniformly sized, and uniformly empty, like the plucked lobes of a Donald Judd stack. The plinths, too, are identical, and recall the stelae of Berlin’s Memorial …