New York's disputed racist Roosevelt statue will be shipped to North Dakota

The final destination of the disputed equestrian monument to Theodore Roosevelt, which has stood in front of the entrance to theAmerican Museum of Natural History in New York City since 1940, has been chosen: the bronze sculpture will be moved to Medora, a small town of 130 inhabitants in the middle of the North Dakota forests, located a two-hour drive from the state capital, Bismarck. Breaking the news is the New York Times.

The decision to send the work to a site so far from New York is motivated by the fact that in Medora the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is under construction, a library that will be built near the ranch that Roosevelt owned in the Badlands: in the 1880s, in fact, Roosevelt had an estate built near Medora (the town had been founded in 1883), where he lived for some time. Here, Roosevelt, having settled in North Dakota after the 1884 presidential election, learned to ride and hunt, and became so interested in frontier life that he wrote about it for nationally circulated magazines and published three books on the subject(Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, Ranch Life and the Hunting-Trail, and The Wilderness Hunter). Roosevelt returned to New York in 1886 after losing his cattle during the previous harsh winter. Also located near Medora is Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the only U.S. national park named after a person.

In June, the city’s Public Design Commission, by unanimous vote had decided to remove from the public square the work of James Earle Fraser (Winona, 1876 - Westport, 1953), created in 1925 as a tribute to Roosevelt, who was president between 1901 and 1906 and Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1906 for mediating in the war between Russia and Japan. The statue is highly controversial because of, the museum explained, “the hierarchical composition that places one figure on horseback and two others walking beside her, and many of us find the depiction of the figures of the native and the African and their placement to be racist.” New York City Parks Department head Sam Biederman, during the discussion that led to the decision to remove the monument, had said that although the work was not done in bad faith, it “supports a thematic framework of colonialism and racism.”

The monument was granted by the American Museum of Natural History in New York to the Medora Library in a long-term loan agreement: however, the library is not scheduled to open until 2026. Until that date, the Roosevelt statue will not be visible: in fact, it will remain in storage, partly because the contracts following the agreement are still being finalized. With the support of the Roosevelt family, the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library will also establish an advisory committee composed of representatives from the Native and black communities, as well as historians, scholars and artists, to determine how to recontextualize the statue. Removal of the statue from its current location will begin in late fall.

Pictured: the monument. Photo by Ad Meskens

New York's disputed racist Roosevelt statue will be shipped to North Dakota

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