Let’s put Christopher Columbus in his place | COMMENTARY

The grander myths of Christopher Columbus were long ago exposed as false. As we’ve outlined on this page before, he didn’t set out to prove the world was round, didn’t discover America and might not even have been Italian. He was never the hero his legend grew to portray him, but instead a complicated man whose journeys commercially linked the Eastern and Western hemispheres, and led the way toward European conquest of North America, as well as the enslavement and domination of its Indigenous peoples.

Schoolchildren today are taught a fuller history of the explorer than their parents and grandparents were, one that views Columbus through this lens of commerce and colonization, and puts his sailing triumphs into context alongside his moral failings, which include ordering the disfigurement, assault and deaths of others. It’s this version of the man that inspired a group of protesters to topple a marble statue honoring him in Baltimore and throw it into the waters of the Jones Falls in the summer of 2020, as the nation was grappling with a wider racial reckoning in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Now, a lighter, smaller replica of the 17,000-pound, 14-foot-tall original has been made and is in search of a home. While the merits of reproducing the artwork at all, and at any size, are debatable, two things are clear: It should not find a place in Baltimore’s public square, nor should it be a celebration of the man. If it’s to stand anywhere, it should be accompanied by a complete accounting of Columbus’ role in history that covers his voyages and his tyranny.

The replica project was brought about by father and son artists, Tilghman and Will Hemsley, who spearheaded retrieval of the original’s remains from the Jones Falls. Helping them was former state senator John A. Pica Jr., who chairs the Italian Heritage Festival Committee and presides over a nonprofit known as Columbus Celebrations Inc. and the group Italian Americans Organizations United, which presented the since destroyed statue to the city in 1984. An inscription on its base at the time incorrectly claimed Columbus was the “discoverer of America,” which ignores not only the people who’d come 15,000 years earlier, but also the Vikings who landed in what is now Canada nearly 500 years before “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” in 1492 (landing in the Bahamas and believing he’d reached Asia, we might add).

Sculptor Will Hemsley, who created the copy, told The Sun his sympathies were with the original statue’s artist who “put his heart and blood” into its creation. “That’s someone’s piece of work,” he said, “a piece of themselves that’s getting torn down for political reasons. And it wasn’t created for that.”

Maybe not. But that’s the thing with art: It’s subjective. Its beauty and meaning is found in the eye of the beholder. The artist’s intent, if known, may inform the interpretation, but that’s the extent of their influence. History, too, is often subjective, with the narrative bending toward the biases of the narrator.

That’s how Columbus the man became Columbus the legend in the United States, with our many Columbus circles and plazas, and all of our “Columbias” (see District of). American colonists, looking for a story with “a past that bypassed England,” according to Columbia University historian Claudia Bushman, embraced Columbus and ran with his reputation centuries after he sailed, turning him into the seafaring explorer many of us were taught to admire and not analyze.

And we have hundreds of statues to prove it. We didn’t need another one. But here we are, with a 2,000-pound duplicate headed for storage until a path for it can be determined. It’s disappointing to see that a third of the work’s cost, $30,000, was paid for by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which claims to strengthen our republic by “conveying the lessons of history to all Americans.”

Still, the conversation about the replica’s placement has been encouraging, thus far. Supporters say they intend to honor the concerns of critics. And in the meantime, officials are considering renaming the Columbus Piazza, where the original statue stood, and placing a statue of an anonymous Italian immigrant there. Others have recommended the placement of plaques that acknowledge groups who lived in Little Italy before it was known as such. It’s a healthier effort. No one is served by a one-sided view of the past.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.