The “cancelled” statue of Theodore Roosevelt that was hauled away in the dead of night from the American Museum of Natural History’s steps should be headed for the scrap heap rather than a presidential library in North Dakota, a group of woke academics and artists claims.
The bronze depiction of the Rough Rider on horseback flanked by an African man and Native American, which was decried as colonialistic and racist, is slated to go to a planned Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, N.D. It was removed in January and is currently in storage in NYC.
“New Yorkers cannot simply dump their toxic cultural products in other communities,” according to an online petition by the academics started last month. “The city should reject the transfer of its undesirable waste elsewhere. In this case, the monument’s bronze content could be melted down or recycled for a better purpose or simply disposed of.”
The petition had drawn more than 275 signatures since it was posted on Tumblr last month. It was started by members of Decolonize This Place, a left-wing activist group which pushed for the statue’s removal.
NYC’s Public Design Commission voted in June to remove the famed “Equestrian Statue,” which had been at the Upper West Side museum since 1940.
The agreement to loan it to the Roosevelt library came in November. The organization has said it is considering its display as a “tool to study the nation’s past.”
Theodore Roosevelt V, a Roosevelt descendant, has called the statue “problematic” but said he didn’t want it shunted away.
“Rather than burying a troubling work of art, we ought to learn from it,” he said in November.
The library is to be located near the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, which includes land that once belonged to the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. Roosevelt owned a ranch in the area.
“I’m not a big fan of Theodore Roosevelt. He’s made some really disparaging remarks about Native Americans,” Mark Fox, chairman of the MHA Nation, said in November.
Andrew Ross, a New York University American studies professor and petition organizer, said the transfer decision was not transparent and Native Americans in North Dakota had not been consulted.
“There are stakeholders here. It’s not just city authorities that really should have a say in this,” Ross said.
Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republicans Club, called the petition drive “insane.”
“It’s still a beautiful piece of art. It’s a monumental statue and it’s part of New York City History, American history,” Wax said. “The fact that they’re now trying to melt it down to nothing is just so callous and almost barbaric, really. This is just modern day iconoclasm.”
A representative of the Roosevelt library would not comment on the petition.
“The Public Design Commission approved the loan of the statue to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library with the understanding that the library will establish an advisory council composed of representatives of the indigenous tribal and black communities, historians, scholars, and artists to guide the reconsideration of the statue,” City Hall spokesman Charles Lutvak said.
