Statue wars: what should we do with troublesome monuments?

I'm all in favour of removing some fuddy duddy old statues into museums/similar to make space for new statues. The 4th plinth project showed that there's a huge wealth of ideas and variety for public art created by artists today, add in the annual sculpture trails (the lambananas in liverpool, aardman statues in bristol etc) in various uk cities etc etc....it's a real shame that the current government and the media doesn't see the value this has and instead focuses on the "tragedy" of removing something celebrating slave traders

That's how things happen - fads and trends come and go. Public art is part of that and reflects it. As long as historical monuments aren't being destroyed just moved to storage I don't see a problem. Historians and the public can still view those items kept in archives but we're not queuing for a sandwich underneath a celebration of slavery either.

Moving something that's entire purpose is to be seen and to be remembered.. into somewhere where it can't be seen or remembered by the public - is the same as destroying it.

If I take a film, bury the only copy deep underground, and let no one find it and stop everyone from ever watching it. I haven't destroyed it, its still there.. but to all practical purposes I have achieved the same effect.

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serious question though:

How far would you go to not 'celebrate slavery' - considering the country you (presumably) live in, in its modern form is built on slavery and colonialism entirely. One thing the OPs article had spot on, was that it pointed out that statues are just the tip of the iceberg.. you can go larger, to buildings built on the back of slavery and celebrating its successes.. whole towns and cities that exist in their present state because of slavery.. you could even argue that the UK wouldn't exist at all right now, if it were not for slavery..

so what should we do? If we start to destroy all traces of slavery because anything that exists that celebrated or came from the successes of slavery is painful to us - should we just destroy large parts of our country entirely? hide them all away for the historians? knock them down, re build them? give it all away? a whole lot of buildings are going to be the first thing to go.. and then the cities and streets will have to follow.

Do you really think removing Rhodes statues will result in entire cities being removed?

That's not what I said.

My point was that, just going by the idea of 'removing celebrations of slavery' is not enough - you need far more nuance and distinctions than that, if your going to decide what should and shouldn't been allowed in public. If your only objection, or at least the only one you gave until that point was that it celebrated slavery - my question was what do you want to do about everything else that celebrates slavery? or was built by slaves.. or came form the profits of slaves etc.

I grew up in a city that was built on the profits of slavery. We learnt about it in school, had trips to the city's slavery museum to learn more and understand how appalling it was.

Good

It's still the case that former slave owners were compensated for their "losses" when slavery was abolished....and the slaves got nothing.

Except their freedom. Its worth remembering that until that point slavery was a near constant across all human civilizations and societies. When you expand your scope wider to our development as a species, the abolition of slavery - is an absolute miracle, and one of the best things that western society has contributed to the world.

Obviously I don't want my city destroyed - I want public recognition that the wealth that built it came from buying and selling human lives.

What better way than using the monuments as educational tools? rather than hiding them away for only historians to see. Teach children that morality and societal ethics change over time, and that whilst these men were once considered great, now we view their actions differently.. and teach them that one day, their own actions may be viewed differently by their great great grandchildren.. its a healthy lesson to teach kids, that morality is not fixed.

The people who should be commemorated aren't the slave owners and brokers - they're the people who had their freedom stolen from them and their lives destroyed.

I would have no problem with statues being created to remember slaves.

IMO my city has done that recognition pretty well so far but there's always room for improvement. removing monuments from public display doesn't mean moving it to somewhere where it is "hidden".

Normally it does - museums are already under attack for displacing work that is problematic, place it anywhere more out of the way than a museum, and its 'hidden'

Archiving doesn't make something inaccessible, and leaving monuments in prominent places doesn't lead to discussion about the past.

It can do, if they are presented and labelled in the correct way. No one is expecting them to lead to national conversations every week.. but a good educational plaque, and when families walk past, and kids ask their parents what it means, and who he was.. the parents can read the plaque, and explain the historical significance of the figure and how he fits into contemporary morality.

The Rhodes statue has been in Oxford for over 100 years - his actions were not discussed by many people at all until the idea of removing the statue was raised. Obviously just leaving it up isn't improving awareness or understanding of history

Or maybe that's because racial tensions hadn't been ratcheted up to the point where people were feeling that the presence of a statue was an assault on their very being. Look at racial tensions over the past 100 years, they go in cycles.. we get a period of intense conflict, followed by a period of calmness and resolution after progress demanded was made. During the period of peace, the demands and goalposts are shifted, new boundaries are set... and within the scope of these new boundaries, people begin to feel oppressed again, and conflict picks up. Slowly the boundaries shrink from vastly important life-altering factors, to small daily annoyances.

Its why we have better race-relations than ever in empirical terms, but when polled, minority youth communities feel more persecuted now than they did in the 90s.

So to the Rhodes statue.. the reason it hasn't been discussed, is not because statues can't lead to discussion - but because the climate had never escalated to the point where we required a discussion about statues until now.

And even now, the controversy around removing has only sparked one discussion:

"should we remove statues"

Not any actual discussion about slavery or history...

"It's still the case that former slave owners were compensated for their "losses" when slavery was abolished....and the slaves got nothing.

"Except their freedom."

that's a really horrible thing to say.