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Op-Ed: We Should Think Differently About the Preservation of Racist Monuments

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Landecker Fellow Tsione Wolde-Michael wrote an op-ed for Hyperallergic, a forum for thinking about art in the world today. Tsione tackled the issue of preserving racist monuments in the context of museums in the United States.

In recent history, racist statues and monuments, particularly their removal, have become symbols of the fight against white supremacy. Museums have often been proposed as the place where these monuments should go. Tsione takes up this question and explores a longer history of the destruction of racist monuments. She points out that there has been a “Black iconoclastic tradition”  suggesting that these statues are also a part of anti-racist histories.

This further complicates the decisions that museum curators have to make: what pieces of history to conserve and how to showcase them? Tsione describes the different considerations that curators need to think about when deciding which pieces to not only acquire but preserve or display.

Read the full article here.

Tsione is one of thirty Landecker Democracy Fellows. This fellowship, a collaboration between the Alfred Landecker Foundation and Humanity in Action, was created to strengthen a new generation of leaders whose approaches to political and social challenges can become catalysts for democratic placemaking and community building. Read more about the fellowship here.