A place in the UK dealt with this well. They had statues of their major founders. Those founders made their fortunes shipping slaves.
Rater than just destroying the statues, they were moved to an out of the way part of the garden. They also gained plaques explaining, while they did some good with their money that money was built on the lives and suffering of fellow men. Their good deeds are remembered, but also their bad.
Brit here, and I don’t know which statues you mean are being displayed in a garden but yeah you could well be right.
There was famously the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, in Bristol. In 2020 the statue was toppled by some protestors. The statue is now in a museum. The people who toppled it were tried in a court for criminal damage, but they were found not guilty by a jury who I guess were sympathetic to the defendants.
That’s shitty, they should be wiped from public memory and forgotten to time. There are countless historical and contemporary figures to commemorate without the baggage of ‘the bad’.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. It’s also a good reminder that a lot of historical people were not as nice as history makes them out to be.
I’ve dedicated my life to history and will never encourage anyone to forget. While painful it is important to remember.
The moving of the statues from a prominent place and the contextualization of their actions is the best way to handle it. Destroying or forgetting our history will get us no where. Understanding it is the way.
As for the destruction of statues many of these themselves are also historic, and that is not appropriate to simply destroy. Remove them from prominent places and provide signage. Modern statues however can be trashed and new ones of these terrible people should not be built.
I think it’s a big problem how much we store that never gets to be seen. If we are going to curate objects they should be accessible and curated. Rotated in and out of display as necessary.
I never see people arguing we should hide statues of Ceaser or any other Roman emperor away in a warehouse. Yet he did many many horrible things in his time. We seem to be able to acknowledge both his fundemental flaws and his impact on history.
Scale this down to a local city, and knowing about those who founded it or influenced it is important too. Seems a waste to lock statues of those away forever. They don’t need to be placed prominently or honored. They need to be contextualized and appropriately placed.
There’s a lot of info you as a viewer can get conveyed from historic statues. Was it built before or after death? Who commissioned it? How is the figure positioned? How does the symbology compare to the real history? It’s hard to capture these from photos and text alone.
Now if we broaden this out to the discussion of other statues maybe we can get a better idea. The example of the UK town statues we’re discussing concerns statues that there are probably one copy of and that changes things.
If we look at say Robert E. Lee, no I don’t think we need to constantly see hundreds of his statues from the 1950s. The 50s in many US states hits that line of historic by state legal standards, so destruction is not an option. I say 1 type specimen per state museum is all that is necessary and the rest could go in storage. Even then if you have an example that’s even older then by all means mothball the younger ones.
We also need to tackle what you define as a monument. Displayed and contextualized in a museum isn’t a monument to me. That is where artifacts belong. In the case of the gardens, that may be the only place that city has, we would need more info, but removing it and placing it in a less prominent position may be the most feasible option for that city.
Finally, history should not only be regulated to books. If you study history through literature only you lose the story entirely. For large portions of human history writing was for the elite and their administration. That is a very narrow view of history, and in many cases those writings do not give the more mundane details. Not to mention even in a history textbook you are relying on someone else’s interpretation of primary evidence. Usually an overview lacks the full nuance. Back to the statue analysis, the symbology of the piece is usually not written down by the makers. We have to analyze that independently. I don’t think this should only be accessible to researchers.
Napoleon did a lot to emancipate Europe from the old aristocratic order, granted freedom to many states, and spread liberal ideals; and yet he created his own dynasty and was harsh to the Germans. Genghis Khan slaughtered millions, but was kind to his subjects who did submit to his rule. Women had rights at a time when patriarchy has been dominant. He allowed religious tolerance and art and commerce flourished under his domain.
History is not as black and white as you think it is.
A place in the UK dealt with this well. They had statues of their major founders. Those founders made their fortunes shipping slaves.
Rater than just destroying the statues, they were moved to an out of the way part of the garden. They also gained plaques explaining, while they did some good with their money that money was built on the lives and suffering of fellow men. Their good deeds are remembered, but also their bad.
Brit here, and I don’t know which statues you mean are being displayed in a garden but yeah you could well be right.
There was famously the statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, in Bristol. In 2020 the statue was toppled by some protestors. The statue is now in a museum. The people who toppled it were tried in a court for criminal damage, but they were found not guilty by a jury who I guess were sympathetic to the defendants.
UK founders? Founders of what?
That’s shitty, they should be wiped from public memory and forgotten to time. There are countless historical and contemporary figures to commemorate without the baggage of ‘the bad’.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. It’s also a good reminder that a lot of historical people were not as nice as history makes them out to be.
We can remember history without building the bad guys statues.
I’ve dedicated my life to history and will never encourage anyone to forget. While painful it is important to remember.
The moving of the statues from a prominent place and the contextualization of their actions is the best way to handle it. Destroying or forgetting our history will get us no where. Understanding it is the way.
As for the destruction of statues many of these themselves are also historic, and that is not appropriate to simply destroy. Remove them from prominent places and provide signage. Modern statues however can be trashed and new ones of these terrible people should not be built.
There is a lot of history relegated only to books. Not every piece of history needs a public facing monument.
If you want to keep them for historical value, store them in a warehouse.
I think it’s a big problem how much we store that never gets to be seen. If we are going to curate objects they should be accessible and curated. Rotated in and out of display as necessary.
I never see people arguing we should hide statues of Ceaser or any other Roman emperor away in a warehouse. Yet he did many many horrible things in his time. We seem to be able to acknowledge both his fundemental flaws and his impact on history.
Scale this down to a local city, and knowing about those who founded it or influenced it is important too. Seems a waste to lock statues of those away forever. They don’t need to be placed prominently or honored. They need to be contextualized and appropriately placed.
There’s a lot of info you as a viewer can get conveyed from historic statues. Was it built before or after death? Who commissioned it? How is the figure positioned? How does the symbology compare to the real history? It’s hard to capture these from photos and text alone.
Now if we broaden this out to the discussion of other statues maybe we can get a better idea. The example of the UK town statues we’re discussing concerns statues that there are probably one copy of and that changes things.
If we look at say Robert E. Lee, no I don’t think we need to constantly see hundreds of his statues from the 1950s. The 50s in many US states hits that line of historic by state legal standards, so destruction is not an option. I say 1 type specimen per state museum is all that is necessary and the rest could go in storage. Even then if you have an example that’s even older then by all means mothball the younger ones.
We also need to tackle what you define as a monument. Displayed and contextualized in a museum isn’t a monument to me. That is where artifacts belong. In the case of the gardens, that may be the only place that city has, we would need more info, but removing it and placing it in a less prominent position may be the most feasible option for that city.
Finally, history should not only be regulated to books. If you study history through literature only you lose the story entirely. For large portions of human history writing was for the elite and their administration. That is a very narrow view of history, and in many cases those writings do not give the more mundane details. Not to mention even in a history textbook you are relying on someone else’s interpretation of primary evidence. Usually an overview lacks the full nuance. Back to the statue analysis, the symbology of the piece is usually not written down by the makers. We have to analyze that independently. I don’t think this should only be accessible to researchers.
Napoleon did a lot to emancipate Europe from the old aristocratic order, granted freedom to many states, and spread liberal ideals; and yet he created his own dynasty and was harsh to the Germans. Genghis Khan slaughtered millions, but was kind to his subjects who did submit to his rule. Women had rights at a time when patriarchy has been dominant. He allowed religious tolerance and art and commerce flourished under his domain.
History is not as black and white as you think it is.