Can We Work Together on Better Public Art?

Cathy left an intriguing comment on my post "Toppling Scarlett's Red Dress". Being from Yorkshire, she doesn't have the same emotional reaction to the topic of removing Confederate monuments that I do, an American and a Yankee. She raises a couple interesting points that deserve a fuller response than I could leave in the comments.

TO address her points:

1. I [Cathy] don't think [the statue of Robert E. Lee] should be destroyed, but moved to a corner in a museum that tells the whole story of the war and of slavery, in other keep it but place it in context.

I think something like that is a great idea:
a creative response!
I imagine a series of community meetings---each local community deciding together what to do with these monuments. 

That's hard to do, especially when people are already at such loggerheads...

I'm sure there are many examples of how that might work.
Not art related, but NPR reported in 2010:'The international peace-making organization Search for Common Ground is honoring three descendants of Thomas Jefferson for "their work to bridge the divide within their family and heal the legacy of slavery."'

One successful public art-making effort I know personally comes from a neighborhood group here, near me, who modeled how such a thing might work. 
In 2012 an all-white group of dog owners proposed the neighborhood alliance use grant money from the city to establish a leash-free dog park in a section of the large Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park.

Seems harmless, perhaps.
But a group of black neighbors strongly opposed it, saying that to them, dogs are associated with white people's violence  against black people (you've seen the famous photos of police dogs attacking black people in the Civil Rights era). 

Oh--searching for those images I found this new (2013) monument! a good example of ADDING to the representation of history, adding monuments to tell the full story [via "Obama Designates Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument"]:

Yeah, so, you can imagine tensions ran high in this neighborhood group.

But the leaders set up a series of talks, (with mediators, I think), so everyone could express themselves and to brainstorm a project everyone could get behind.

Eventually they came up with a public art project: 
a series of mosaic panels made by volunteers of all ages, to be mounted on the park building incorporating designs from the textile arts of different ethnic groups in the neighborhood.
I wrote about the making of the mosaics in 2013, which look absolutely stunning in place. Image via Sharra Frank, mosaic designer.


2. The statue was for "all the ordinary chaps that fought and gave their lives; the state may have helped the families grieve."

You'd think so, right? 
Here's the surprising (to me) thing about these Confederate monuments: 
they're not actually from the Confederacy.
Most they were erected during the era of Jim Crow, "the name for official segregation and state-sponsored racism.” [via "Who Was Jim Crow?"

According to Karen L. Cox, professor of history at the U of North Carolina, in a recent article in the Atlantic :
"The vast majority of monuments date to between 1895 and World War I. They were part of a campaign to paint the Southern cause in the Civil War as just and slavery as a benevolent institution, and their installation came against a backdrop of Jim Crow violence and oppression of African Americans. The monuments were put up as explicit symbols of white supremacy."

Cox explains who was behind their erection, raised the money, etc. (the United Daughters of the Confederacy), and she also notes, "The bestselling book of 1936 and 1937, Gone With the Wind, which also became an international film sensation, [was] essentially [a] popular celebration of white supremacy and Southern civilization.

The Confederate battle flag came into popularity even later. According to historian David Goldfield, author of Still Fighting the Civil War:

"In the 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement built up steam, you began to see more and more public displays of the Confederate battle flag, to the point where the state of Georgia in 1956 redesigned their state flag to include the Confederate battle flag."

Mayor Singer of Charlottesville, Va, today (8/19/17):

"All of a sudden these statues of Civil War generals installed in the Jim Crow era, they became touchstones of terror, the twisted totems that people are clearly drawn to, trying to create a whole architecture of intimidation and hatred around them that was visited around our town. It was evil."

I think white southerners who truly want to honor their dead and acknowledge the complexities of our heritage could find a better way than resurrecting symbols of oppression.

3. Robert E. Lee was presumably good at his job.

Yes! He was. He was exceptionally good at military things. 
But which of his jobs are we talking about?

For most of his career, he was an officer for the army of the United States of America, to whom he swore his loyalty. 
And then when his home state of Virginia seceded from the Union, he went with it and became a great military leader for the Confederate States of America. Which makes him a traitor as defined by the Constitution of the USA.

But Northerners don't usually tend to think of him as a traitor, and neither did Lincoln, who said that since the South had no legal right to leave the Union, its attempts to secede was just a failed attempt and let's move on and say no more about that... There were not treason trials after the war, and Lee is still often "revered as a southern gentleman who gave his all to the 'Lost Cause' of the Confederate States of America." [via A Patriot's History]

It's hard to get the emotional tone of another country's symbols right, but maybe Lee is a little like Oliver Cromwell??? 
Also "good at his job," depending on what you think his job was.
King-killer? Ethnic cleanser of Ireland? Key player in the establishment of Western democracy? All of the above?

Anyway, I was surprised to see there's a statue of Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament in London.  

OK, so--those are my responses this Saturday morning. Now to go take the dog for a walk and clear my head!

Oh, no--wait! 
One more example of public art monuments in a literal face-off: The Fearless Girl and the  Wall Street Bull!