This article originally appeared in the March/April 2019 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of membership with the Alliance. Click here to learn more about membership!
Are museums the rightful home for Confederate monuments?
InĀ the summer of 2017, white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-oldĀ paralegal, was killed by a man who drove his car through a crowd of counter-protesters.
In the wake of that tragedy, newspapers across the nation called for the removal ofĀ Confederate monuments from the American public sphereāand their āsafe housingā in museums. “What to do with Confederate monuments? Put them in museums as examples ofĀ ugly history, not civic pride,ā read an LA Times headline days after the Charlottesville riots. āConfederate Monuments Belong in Museums, Not Public Squaresā stated aĀ Weekly StandardĀ headline on August 20, 2017.
In just over a year and a half, moreĀ than four dozen Confederate monuments in at least 27 cities across the US have, in fact, been removed, pulled down, āretired,ā spray painted,Ā chiseled, written on, or otherwise physically altered (what some have described asĀ āvandalizedā), resulting in their official āsafekeepingā in warehouses, research centers,Ā cemeteries, and other sometimes unidentified spaces throughout the urban landscape.
Many of these monuments have made their way to museum cold-storage spaces; a smallerĀ number have spawned new displays on museum exhibition floors. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has even proposed constructing an entirely new museum just to house the recently toppled āSilent Samā statue that stood for decades on the main campus lawn.
However, a number of history museumsāincluding the Smithsonianāhave out-and-out refused to take a Confederate statue, citing everything from the logistical challenges to the highĀ cost to the misalignment with their missions.
But the debate about what to do with these monuments is far from over. In fact, the AmericanĀ Association for State and Local History recently released a guide for museum professionals,Ā public historians, and community leaders on how to navigate the issue. Yet no āhow-toā manualĀ can supply an easy solution to this extremely complex issue.
Many museums continue to grapple with what role they should, could, or must play in the storing or displaying of theseĀ gigantic āhomagesāāartifacts not even of the Civil War itself, but of the Jim Crow movementsĀ that fueled their commissioning and erection in prominent public places in the early 20thĀ century.
Jefferson Davis at the University of Texas
The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin is an oft-cited example of an institution that has taken a definitive step in dealing with this issue. TheĀ museum agreed to house an 8 Ā½-foot-tall, 2,000-pound statue of Jefferson Davis, formerĀ president of the Confederacy, that was removed from the campusā South Mall in 2015.
āI think this is the answer,ā said Don Carleton, the centerās executive director, in an August 18,Ā 2017,Ā USA TodayĀ article that is pointedly titled āWhen a bronze Confederate needed to retire, University of Texas found a home.ā He continued, āThey are pieces of art; destroying that is like burning books. They need to be preserved and they belong in museums.ā
He added that the center will not ābe putting him in our building as some sort of shrine toĀ Jefferson Davis, but as an educational experience and point of discussion.ā The permanentĀ exhibition āFrom Commemoration to Educationā tells how the statue came to be and why it wasĀ later removed from its original spot on campus. According to the exhibitionās curator, Ben Wright, in the same story, āthe presence of the statueĀ in an educational exhibition, as opposedĀ to a place of honor, underlines that Davis, as well as his ideas and actions, are no longerĀ commemorated by the university.ā
Yet some students, Austin citizens, and concerned museum-goers complain that the exhibitionĀ continues to glorify the statue because of the inherent value conferred on objects in a museum.
In addition, they note, statues appear even more monumental when squeezed into a standard museum hallway space. No matter how sensitively museums contextualize the artifactsĀ themselves, does their larger-than-life presence in an enclosed exhibition space mitigate, orĀ even parody, any interpretive value?
Confronting the Racism
A growing number of museum professionalsāespecially professionals of color and their alliesāare increasingly cautioning that the āput them in a museumā response to Confederate memorials, no matter how sensitively stated, reflects a larger misunderstanding of what museums are for.
In addition, simply housing these monuments in museums sidesteps important questions thatĀ we need to ask in our communities and within our own institutions: Who are theĀ āstakeholdersā who are being brought toāor remain absent fromāthe table in theseĀ conversations about Confederate statues, and what is the role of āprofessionalsā in theĀ process? Do we trust that curators and museum personnel have the right stuff to lead theĀ charge? Who will be the arbiters and decision makers in the meaning-making process? And howĀ is this process limitedāor framedāby the startingĀ assumption that the monuments must beĀ preserved in the public sphere?
Anti-racism educator and historian Ibram Kendi reflected on his youth in Manassas, Virginia,Ā and the meaning of Confederate monuments during the keynote speech at the March 3, 2018,Ā symposium āMascots, Myths, Monuments and Memoryā at the National Museum of African American History and Culture: In thinking through my comments for today, I tried to really understand, first and foremost,Ā how it felt for me, how it feels for so many of us toĀ live day in and day out surrounded by soĀ many Confederate monuments. How does it feel for those people that have to literally watchĀ people cheer for mascots that are a desecration of their people? How does it feel to see mythsĀ memorialized in public squares, in massive stadiums? And more importantly, what do these feelings say about our memories and our histories, let alone the memories of the defenders ofĀ these monuments and mascots?
For years, the echoing silence from mainstream museums was a frustrating reminder that mostĀ staff were unwilling or unable to confront racist monuments, racist artifacts, or racism in anyĀ form. As museum professionals, we must be willing to create intellectually active spacesĀ wherever we gatherāin workshops, at conferences, in staff break rooms, and in our communitiesā public spacesāto grapple with the overt assumptions surrounding these monuments.
Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginiaāa city once the seat of the Confederacyāwas asked toĀ co-chair Richmondās Monument Avenue Commission toĀ help bridge the different perspectives in her community on the fate of five ConfederateĀ monuments along one of the cityās main boulevards. She helped implement a groundbreakingĀ community engagement process.
From July 2017 to May 2018, the commission solicited extensive community input about theseĀ monuments through emails, letters, and public forums. In the end, the final report (see Resources) captures the nuanced ways in which people encounter theĀ monuments and their yearning for more context, new possibilities, and alternative options forĀ memorialization.
As museum professionals, we must formulate our own approach to where, whether, and howĀ to re-contextualize these toppled monuments to our Jim Crow past. In doing so, we mustĀ recognize our own histories of complicity in the centering of white, male, hetero-normativeĀ heritages and the celebration of icons of white supremacy. We must also acknowledge that, over the generations, communities of color and other marginalized groups have tirelesslyĀ contested these narratives and fought for their rightful place in history.
Recognizing Black Activism
Before the Richmond initiative, in 2015 the New Orleans City Council voted to remove all of itsĀ Confederate statues from city parks. The successful Take āEm Down movement in New OrleansĀ was the direct result of grassroots community activism led by black organizers.
To emphasize this history is all the more crucial given that most media coverage attributed theĀ removals to the open-mindedness and forward thinking of Mitch Landrieu, New Orleans mayorĀ at the time. The media lauded his speech and unprecedentedĀ action rather than acknowledgingĀ the black leadership that truly and thoughtfully catalyzed these changes.
By November 2014, black activists from BYP100 NOLA had already issued a petition for theĀ removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. And as early as the 1970s, long-time activist Malcolm SuberĀ had been calling for the removal of all white supremacist symbols, which resulted in theĀ renaming of more than 30 schools in the 1990s. Yet this sustained activism has been renderedĀ invisible.
A broader conversation about museums and monuments must include not only a recognition ofĀ the landscapes of oppression that the Confederate statues mark but also an understanding ofĀ the self-determined landscapes of resistance that marginalized communities have created to mark their own histories, in opposition to, but also in spite of, these erasures.
Museo Urbano in El Paso, Texas; Pauli Murray Center in Durham, North Carolina; Jane AddamsĀ Hull-House Museum in Chicago; Weeksville Heritage Center in New York; the Abbe Museum in Maine; and the recently opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama, are examples of ābottom-upā museums that are de-centering white supremacist narratives, centeringĀ marginalized histories and social justice, modeling innovative approaches to inclusion, andĀ redefining memorials and monuments.
For example, the sole mission of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice is to examine theĀ lasting legacy of lynching in theĀ United States. The sheer scale of the memorial, strategically set atop a hill near downtown Montgomery, Alabama, with hundreds of six-foot-tall oxidizing ironĀ columns, creates another form of canonization. Thousands of names have been carefully inscribed into the metal faces, boldly proclaiming a history that was deliberately silenced and largely erased but is now creating a new paradigm for what constitutes a Southern ānarrative.ā
Bryan Stevenson, founder of the memorial and the neighboring Legacy Museum,Ā insists thatĀ such a monumental recognition of our nationās racist past is a necessary corrective to theĀ museums and public history initiatives that have failed us by rushing headlong intoĀ memorialization instead of confronting our American history of exclusion and selectiveĀ representation.
The Anti-Monument Movement
We are beginning to see museums, universities, and public institutions support what some haveĀ called the āanti-monument.ā These are sculptures, interventions, or tributes that bring to theĀ fore contested histories and question how and why we memorialize people and legacies.
A great anti-monument example is Titus Kapharās work for the Princeton & Slavery Project atĀ Princeton University. His sculptureĀ Impressions of Liberty, part of hisĀ Monumental InversionsĀ series, was positioned for part of 2017 in front of the original Princeton presidentās house (now the alumni association building). The artwork includes a recognizable regal silhouette in theĀ form of a wooden carving of former Princeton President Samuel Finley and, within his shadow,Ā a depiction of a man, woman, and child that Finley owned and enslaved.
āMonuments are often erected to memorialize fallen heroes or otherwise reinforce a particularĀ idea of the past,ā said James Christen Steward, the director of the universityās art museum, in aĀ HuffPost article. āIn that light, I think Titus Kapharās work is more āanti-monument,ā drawing ourĀ attention to forgotten histories and to the idea that history itself is being constantly rewritten.
It isĀ that understanding of history as fluid (and as a tale of both who is depicted and who isĀ omitted) that indeed drew us to his work.ā
No matter how museums ultimately come down on the Confederate monument debate, weĀ believe that these and other public institutions of education and power must critically examineĀ their own histories of exclusion and any continued complicities in what they monumentalizeĀ before they earn the right to properly contextualize racist memorials.
As artist Nayland Blake recently stated, āMuseums need to decide whether or not they areĀ active participants in the life of their city or if they are just some kind of trophy house.ā
Resources
An earlier version of this article (by Bryant, Scott, Seriff, and including co-authors Benjamin Filene and Louis Nelson) ran on AAMās Center for the Future of Museums blog and on Smithsonian.com. aam-us.org/2018/04/03/are-museums-the-rightful-home-for-confederate-monuments/bit.ly/2VEzmi5
Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders, David B. Allison (ed.), 2018 Monument Avenue Commission Report, prepared for the Office of the Mayor and City Council, City of Richmond, Virginia, 2018 bit.ly/2MJ3wzf
Take āEm Down NOLA MovementĀ takeemdownnola.org
āHow Robert E. Lee Got Knocked Off His Pedestal,ā Brentin Mock, CityLab, May 29, 2017Ā bit.ly/2LWOgfi
Princeton & Slavery slavery.princeton.edu/stories/princeton-and-slavery-holding-the-center
āPrinceton Confronts Its Slave-Owning Past With An āAnti-Monument,āā Priscilla Frank, HuffPost, Nov. 28, 2017Ā bit.ly/2SFmxSQ
Janeen Bryant is principal consultant at Facilitate Movement; Jennifer Scott is the director andĀ chief curator of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum at the University of Illinois at Chicago, andĀ Suzanne Seriff is an independent museum curator and senior lecturer in the Department ofĀ Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.
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