He’s going on a rough ride!
A statue of President Theodore Roosevelt will be ripped down from in front of the American Museum of Natural History — a decision that was finalized this week over claims that it symbolizes colonial subjugation and racial discrimination.
The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously Monday to relocate the bronze effigy of the nation’s 26th president that has stood at the Upper West Side institution since 1940, the New York Times reported.
The monument — which shows Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by an African man and a Native American man — has long been criticized for glorifying colonialism and racism. It was vandalized with paint in 2017.
According to the Times, the statue will go to a yet-to-be-designated cultural institution dedicated to the former president’s life and legacy.
In a statement, a Roosevelt family member expressed approval for the removal of the statue, which was created by the American sculptor James Earle Fraser.
“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice,” Theodore Roosevelt IV, 77, a great-grandson of the president and a museum trustee, told The Times.
“The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward,” he added.
Opposition to the statue mounted in recent years, especially after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, a black man whose last breaths under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer sparked a racial reckoning and a wave of protests across the US.
In June 2020, officials at the museum — which is privately run but sits on public land — proposed removing the statue. Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the removal of the “problematic statue.”
The move came amid nationwide protests over racial inequality and a push to remove public works honoring Confederate leaders.
Museum President Ellen Futter told the paper: “Over the last few weeks, our museum community has been profoundly moved by the ever-widening movement for racial justice that has emerged after the killing of George Floyd.”
She added: “We have watched as the attention of the world and the country has increasingly turned to statues as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism.”
Futter stressed that the decision was based on the statue’s “hierarchical composition,” not on Roosevelt, whom the museum honors as “a pioneering conservationist.”
“Simply put, the time has come to move it,” she said, adding that in a compensatory gesture, the museum is naming its Hall of Biodiversity for Roosevelt “in recognition of his conservation legacy.”
Sam Biederman of the New York City Parks Department said during the meeting that although the statue “was not erected with malice of intent,” its composition “supports a thematic framework of colonization and racism,” according to the newspaper
Dan Slippen, the museum’s vice president of government relations, said at the meeting: “The understanding of statues and monuments as powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism became even more evident in the wake of the movement for racial justice that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.”
He added: “It has become clear that removing the statue would be a symbol of progress toward an inclusive and equitable community.”