What purpose do statues serve?

Most statues were erected to remind us of a significant event and to honour the contribution of a particular person to society.

What historical statues have been removed?

Confederate monuments

Why is removing Confederate statues important?

They fought for white racial supremacy. That is why monuments glorifying them and their cause should be removed. According to historian Adam Goodheart, the statues were meant to be symbols of white supremacy and the rallying around them by white supremacists will likely hasten their demise.

Do statues have historical value?

Statues convey and perpetuate honor. Consequently, no matter how important their historical role, villains simply do not merit statues, nor do they merit having their names associated with lakes or streets or schools or military bases.

Why are monuments important to a community?

Certainly monuments can contribute to a sense of shared heritage in societies where a monument reflects their values and understanding of the past. In such cases members of a community have a shared responsibility to maintain and conserve a monument.

What do statues stand on?

A pedestal (from French piédestal, Italian piedistallo ‘foot of a stall’) or plinth is the support of a statue or a vase, and of a column in architecture. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles.

What happens to all the statues taken down?

Most of those monuments were delivered to Confederate cemeteries or accepted by museums, although a handful were headed for private properties or to local historical societies and organizations with ties to the statues.

Should statues be left where they are?

But statues – fragments of our past – should, by and large, be left where they are because, by the passage of time, they take on new meaning – they cease to be monuments to a single life and become instead monuments to uncomfortable truths, monuments to ideas, to complexity and yes, monuments to wrongdoing or shameful acts.

Should we remove statues of controversial figures?

Advocates of removing statues of controversial figures, suggest that these monuments represent individuals whose actions and legacies should not be celebrated or memorialised.

Why do we care about statues?

Not in aspic, not without a changing context and not, where appropriate, without explanation. When we see a statue, particularly in a public place, we are led to feel that the subject continues to deserve the honour. Very often they do but while a statue remains unchanged for hundreds of years, context does not.

Is removing Confederate statues a good idea?

Removing statues is a slippery slope that could lead to the brash removal of monuments to any slightly problematic person. During the protests following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, many Confederate statues were damaged or toppled, as were statues of Presidents George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , and Ulysses S. Grant .