THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter
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| Protesters in Durham, N.C., pulled down a statue of a Confederate soldier last week. Credit Kate Medley/Reuters |
The Charlottesville incident, and the president’s remarks, had created a consciousness-raising call to eliminate — or defend — statues associated with the Confederacy. A frenzied ideological war over visual images was underway. Basically, I take the move to isolate and banish Confederate nationalist images as a healthy one. The art critic in me welcomes the unloading, too, though for different reasons. As to where they go: museums, existing or custom-built, urban and regional. For this to happen, though, museums will have to relinquish their pretense of ideological neutrality. They will have to become truth-telling institutions. [
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| A statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad in 2003. Credit Gilles Bassignac/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images |
