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Theodore Roosevelt’s equestrian monument has long raised objections to colonialism and racism.
By Robin Pogrebin
The bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt, on horseback and flanked by a Native American and an African, who has presided over the American Natural Hitale Museum in New York since 1940, is descended.
The decision, proposed through the museum and accepted through New Yor City, which owns the design and property, came after years of objections from the activists and at a time when the assassination of George Floyd avoided an urgent national verbal exposure on racism.
For many, the central front of the West Park Museum’s equestrian statue museum has become a symbol of a painful legacy of colonial expansion and racial discrimination.
“Over the past few weeks, the painting works of our museum have been deeply moved through the next motion of racial justice that arose after the assassination of George Floyd,” museum president Ellen V. Futter said in an interview. “We have seen the global and the country’s attention addressing statues as challenging and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.”
Ms. Futter made it transparent that the museum’s resolution rested on the statue itself, that is, in its “hierarchical composition,” and not on Roosevelt, whom the museum continues to honor as a “pioneer curator.”
“In undeniable terms,” he added, “now is the time to pass it on.
The museum acted in the midst of a heated national debate about the relevance of statues or monuments that first concentrated on Confederate symbols like Robert E. Lee and now feature an arc of moving characters, from Christopher Columbus to Winston Churchill.
Last week, a mob set fire to a statue of George Washington in Portland, Oregon, before shooting it to the ground. Shots broke out at a rally in Albuquerque, it’s not easy to remove a statue of Juan de O’ae, New Mexico’s despotic conqueror. And members of the New York City Council demanded that a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall be delivered.
In the big block of such cases, protests were made through demonstrators who say the photographs are too offensive to monuments in American history. The resolution on the Roosevelt statue is different, made through a museum that, like others, had defended and preserved the features as relics in their time that, as reprehensible, can also be used to educate. Then she was supported through the city, which had the last word.
“The American Natural Hitale Museum has called for the statue of Theodore Roosevelt to be removed, as it explicitly depicts blacks and other American aboriginals as subdued and more racist inferior friends,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement. “The City supports the Museum’s request. This is the right resolution and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”
When the monument is demolished, where it will pass and what, if any, will reposition it, which is indeterminate, the authorities said.
A member of Roosevelt’s circle of relatives issued the discharge.
“The global does not prefer statues, the relics of some other era, reflect the values of the individual they seek to honor, nor the values of equality and justice,” said Theodore Roosevelt IV, 77, great-grandson of the 26th president. and a museum administrator. “The composition of the equestrian statue does not reflect the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt. It’s time to move the statue and move on.
In a compensatory movement, the museum named its biodiversity room for Roosevelt “in popularity of its conservation heritage,” Futter said.
The president’s father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., was a founding member of the institution; his letter was signed at his home. Excavations from Roosevelt’s formative years were some of the museum’s earliest artifacts. The New York State Legislature in 1920 chose the museum as the site to commemorate the former president. The museum in one position has several spaces named after Roosevelt, adding the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda and Theodore Roosevelt Park outside.
However, critics have emphasized President Roosevelt’s perspectives on the racial hierarchy, that of eugenic theories, and his central role in the Spanish-American war. Some see Roosevelt as an imperialist who fought in the Caribbean and that his best friend caused American expansion into the colonies there and in the Pacific, adding To Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Cuba and the Philippines.
A nationalist, Roosevelt, in his later years brailingly racist, historians say, approving the sterilization of the most disabled deficient and intellectual friend.
The statue, created through the American sculptor James Earle Fraser, was one of four New York City memorials on which a city commander rethored as in 2017, and finally decided after a decisive division to leave the statue in position and load the context.
The museum attempted this context with an exhibition last year, “Addressing the Statue,” which explored its design and installation, adding characters walking alongside Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s racism. The museum also tasted its own prospective complicity, that is, its exhibitions on eugenics in the early twentieth century.
“I’m glad to see it disappear,” said Mabel O. Wilson, a Columbia University professor who served in town on direct orders to re the statue and was consulted on display.
“The depiction of Indigenous and Africangardness of Roosevelt, who is strong and manly,” he added, “was evidently a story of white racial superiority and domination.
But President Trump, among those who criticized the verdict on Twitter where he wrote, “Ridiculous, don’t do it!”
The museum’s exhibition on the statue was partly a reaction to the statue’s degradation through the protesters, who in 2017 threw a red liquid representing blood at the base of the statue. The protesters, who knew themselves as members of the Monument Removal Brigade, then issued a call on the Internet for removal as a symbol of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism of settlers.”
“Now the statue is bleeding,” the statement said. “We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation.”
The organization also said the museum “prepares its cultural halls regarding the colonial mentality that underlies them.”
At the time, the museum said that court cases would be sent through the Commission of the Mayor of Blasio to directly inspect the city’s monuments and that the museum planned to update its exhibits. Since then, the establishment has undergone a renovation of its Northwest Coast Hall in consultation with Aboriginal nations on the northwest coast of Canada and Alaska.
In January, the museum also moved the giant canoe on the northwest coast from the front of 77th Street to the corridor to further contextualize it. The museum diorama in New York, which includes a stereotypical depiction of Lenape executives, now has subtitles explaining why the demonstration is offensive.
The mayor of Blasio sought to rebuild public monuments to honor more women and other Americans of color: a company in a giant component through his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the She Built NYC Commission. But those efforts were also controversial, given the court cases about the transparency of the procedure and the public figures who were excluded, i.e. Mother Cabrini, a head of immigrants who had attracted the maximum nominations in a Survey of New Yorkers.
On Friday, the mayor announced that Ms. McCray would lead a commission on racial justice and reconciliation whose mandate, a review of the city’s monuments, is considered racist.
Although debates about the big apple of these statues were marked by resentment, the Hitale Natural Museum does not contradict the removal of the Roosevelt Monument, which has hosted its visitors for so long.
“We move the statue is also a symbol of progress in our commitment to design and maintain an inclusive and equitable society,” Futter said. “Our point of view has evolved. This moment crystallized our thinking and propelled us into action.
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