Equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt

Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt is a 1939 bronze sculpture by James Earle Fraser. It was located on public park land at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The equestrian statue depicts Theodore Roosevelt on horseback. Walking on either side of him are two men, on one side a Native American and on the other, a sub-Saharan African.

The statue has provoked increasing criticism for its hierarchical implications, and there were calls to remove it beginning in 2017. On June 21, 2020, the museum announced that it was asking city officials to remove the statue. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio supported the removal, as did Roosevelt's great-grandson, Theodore Roosevelt IV, and great-great-grandson Kermit Roosevelt III. The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously on June 21, 2021, to relocate the statue. The statue was removed on January 20, 2022. It was decided that the statue would be relocated to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, though it was not specified how the statue would be displayed, with no plans immediately made to display the statute for public viewing.

History

It was dedicated on October 27, 1940. Cast by Gorham Manufacturing Company, Providence, RI.

The inscription reads:

(On rear of sculpture:)

J E FRASER SC 1939

(On front of base:)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

1858–1919

(On left side of base:)

GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

1899 1901

(On right side of base:)

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

1901 1909 signed

Commission

The sculpture was commissioned by the Roosevelt Memorial Association in the 1930s after Fraser had delivered his design for the Arts of Peace memorial in Washington D.C., which at the time was also in competition with this memorial as the chosen location. For Arts of Peace, Fraser made a pair of statues of Pegasus depicting the themes Music and Harvest, and Aspiration and Literature.

The statue was placed at the entrance to the museum's hall of dioramas dedicated to Carl Akeley who had accompanied Roosevelt on a year-long expedition to Africa. The sculpture and its pedestal were designed for this setting, appropriate in scale and design for the neo-classical plans of Henry Bacon's architecture. An earlier monument by Fraser dedicated to Roosevelt in Cuba in 1924 was also designed with Henry Bacon, and they both attended its dedication in Cuba.

The two walking figures have been construed as representations of continents, not individuals in a narrative, and that was common practice in public sculpture, of which London's Albert Memorial is a prominent example. At the same time, the "pyramidal composition" with Roosevelt at its apex "implies a hierarchy". One analysis of the work, after examining the careers of both Roosevelt and Fraser, concludes that "Both men evidently believed in white dominance as natural order. However, Roosevelt and Fraser also had sincere, if paternalistic, admiration for indigenous cultures and a desire to preserve images and artifacts in what was, for the time, a relatively respectful manner." Many feel the statue depicts Roosevelt, an early champion of civil rights and equality for black and Native Americans during the early 20th century, as leading minority persons in the U.S. forward towards the promises made to all under the U.S. Constitution. Roosevelt's relationship with Booker T. Washington and his appointment of Minnie Cox as the first black regional postmaster in the United States (Indianola, Mississippi) is seen as further cementing this view. Roosevelt's own comments regarding race indicated that he believed all the races were equal, but some cultures were superior due to their greater technological advances over time. The sculptor of the statue, James Earle Fraser, stated the intent with these words: "The two figures at [Roosevelt's] side are guides symbolizing the continents of Africa and America, and if you choose may stand for Roosevelt's friendliness to all races."

Controversy

In 1984 the statue was the subject of criticism by the American philosopher Donna Haraway as part of a long essay criticising the role played by Roosevelt and Akeley in the museum's founding . In 1991 four life-sized photographs of the statue shown on four faces of a large cube, surrounded by sand bags and wooden police cordons as well as ticker tape and balloons. formed the installation at the Museum of Modern Art by David Hammons titled Pulic Enemy for the exhibition Dislocations. In 1999 James Loewen argued in Lies Across America that the statue was erected when the museum was openly racist, and that the arrangement of the figures is meant to advocate white supremacy.

The statue was mentioned in the April 2017 TED talk Can Art Amend History? by artist and activist Titus Kaphar, discussing the choice of pose showing that "Teddy Roosevelt is sitting there ...and on the left-hand side of him is a Native American walking and on the right-hand side of him is an African-American walking" as a representation of white social hierarchy in America. After the Unite the Right rally due to the controversial removal of an equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, this and many other statues across America also became the focus of attempts to remove what were claimed to be glorifications of America's racist past. The base of the statue was covered with red paint on the morning of October 26, 2017. A few hours later, a group admitted guilt and claimed that the statue embodied "patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism."

In January 2018, a commission appointed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to review several statues on city property concluded that this statue was open to many interpretations and made no recommendation for action. The commission's members were divided evenly. Some citing research that the standing figures are allegorical representations of the continents and noting that these figures "are in no way abject". Others emphasized how the sculpture is experienced, "that height is power in public art", an expression of "power and dominance". The New York Times critic Holland Cotter found that decision disappointing: "It doesn't require a sensitivity to subtexts to see that the composition, no matter how you gloss it, is quite literally an emblem of white-man-on-top."

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt (New York City)」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。