A Murky Mess of Monuments in Crisis New York

By Todd Fine

Gonzalo Casals, New York City's new commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), begins work this week after recovering from the coronavirus. Hired to replace Tom Finkelpearl, who resigned after repeated controversies over an ambitious effort to build at least a dozen new historical monuments, Casals was tasked to bring the initiative to the "finish line” in the remaining twenty months of Mayor Bill de Blasio's second and final term. 

Suddenly, his responsibility is to salvage the city's cultural institutions now that the landscape is hemorrhaging funds. With not a single one of the new monuments near completion, statues and sculptures may appear a luxury that can be put off for the time being. Indeed, with a seventy-five million dollar cut already proposed for DCLA in the new budget, there is speculation that the Mayor’s pledged fund for new public art projects might not be assured.

Nonetheless, the monument initiative is a highly visible part of the mayor's legacy, as well as that of First Lady Chirlane McCray, who made many of the key decisions, and who desires to run for office herself. Unveiling ceremonies offer sweet and visible rewards for politicians. There are also artists who hope to be paid, several monuments are tied to existing city capital projects, and the Charlottesville-inspired motives are still urgent as long as Trump is president. 

The current rupture in New York politics — with COVID-19 bringing a new spirit of reflection — could provide an opportunity to review what has happened so far, and how the initiative can be improved before the next mayor reassesses. New monuments, once promised and budgeted, are difficult to abandon, even if they take many years to conclude. 

Christopher Columbus Column at Columbus Circle

While the initiative’s ambition may have strained the capacity of city agencies, its attempted scale did reflect the symbolic potency of a moment where New Yorkers wanted to pronounce their values. Parallel with the national controversy over Confederate monuments, the initiative was triggered by long-standing calls to remove monuments that many believed were racist. In 2017, the City organized a blue-ribbon Mayoral Commission to consider eliminating several of the most controversial monuments, primarily the column with Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle, the statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History, and the statue of doctor J. Marion Sims on the border of Central Park.

In declining to risk the political fallout and remove Columbus or Roosevelt, the commission's report, clearly shaped by Finkelpearl, advocated instead the construction of new monuments that would improve diversity in the city's overall public art collection. In a press release, the DCLA announced the dedication of a new $10 million fund to install a series of new, diversity-oriented monuments.

Since then, at least nine new city-sponsored monuments have been announced, with even more promised. Three other official monuments relevant to the diversity theme — for Puerto Rican drummer Tito Puente, for the literary heritage of Lower Manhattan's “Little Syria” neighborhood, and for the abolitionist history of Downtown Brooklyn — were already in the works.

Each of the new monuments had different political objectives. However, in all cases, the City pledged to use the same selection process: DCLA’s Percent for Art program, which is customarily tied to large-scale city capital projects.

Citizen activists compelled the removal of the statue of Sims, a southern doctor who experimented on slaves, and expected a role in choosing artwork that would replace it. 

The First Lady and former Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen seized the opportunity to build five monuments of women New Yorkers — one for each borough — as good politics that could be linked to a city initiative to support women in business. The two ultimately overruled a panel of experts that had reviewed a set of public nominations, and instead selected the subjects themselves.

The City announced a sixth "SheBuiltNYC" monument honoring LGBT activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. A less concrete memorial to be built for indigenous peoples, perhaps in some unorthodox form, was announced in the commission report’s press release, and, despite few updates, city officials say they have continued to discuss it with representative entities. Finally, Finkelpearl himself apparently conceived a monument for a prominent 19th-century black family linked to Seneca Village in Central Park, and directly solicited major New York foundations to support its budget.

From its origins in the problem of removing contested monuments to the recent subject and siting decisions, the monument initiative has triggered controversy repeatedly. Public art experts debate whether the disputes reflect the inherently divisive nature of public art in a city like New York, or emerged from hasty decisions made by leaders in a rush to build monuments for political symbolism. The debates varied, but one common denominator was the expectation that public preferences should determine the nature of public art.

Members of the SheBuiltNYC advisory council objected to how the City overruled their recommendation to build monuments that would honor groups of women, instead of statues for individuals, with CUNY professor Harriet Senie calling the process "a charade."

The First Lady's decision to pass over the nominee that had received the most public nominations in an online poll — Catholic saint Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini — led to an ugly tabloid spat that lasted for months in late 2019. It only concluded when Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged that the state government would construct its own Cabrini monument, now planned to be unveiled in Battery Park City by Columbus Day.

The artist selection process for the “Beyond Sims” replacement monument ended in heated argument after community members claimed that the Percent for Art panel did not reflect community input and had made a tone-deaf selection. Similarly, three other monument projects — for singer Billie Holiday, for early civil rights activist Elizabeth Jennings Graham, and for the prominent Lyons family — were criticized by historians for siting decisions that had little connection to their subjects and no local backing.

Advocates for the previously arranged public artworks — for Tito Puente, Little Syria, and something on Brooklyn abolitionism — also griped as these initiatives faded as priorities compared to the new projects.

In light of the numerous disputes, last December the City Council's oversight committee for Cultural Affairs held a hearing to review concerns over the monument initiative and the Percent for Art program, which had already been reformed in 2017 due to concerns about public responsiveness. Chairman Jimmy Van Bramer pledged that transparency would improve under the next commissioner and that there would be additional hearings regarding the way forward for the monument initiative.

However, beyond simply rehashing the past disputes, the most significant takeaway from the hearing and its expert testimony was a widely shared concern over the overall capacity of city agencies to implement the initiative. Former directors of the Percent for Art program testified how a single large-scale monument project could uniquely tax their resources.

Despite wide praise for Percent for Art’s director Kendal Henry and his small staff of two, the department could not explain how the program could possibly shepherd twelve large-scale monuments simultaneously. Not only is the legally-required Percent for Art process a burden itself (requiring at least three public meetings), but each project also requires extensive cooperation from the Department of Design and Construction and the property-owning entity (usually the Department of Parks and Recreation or the Department of Transportation).

Even when a design is prepared, new monuments can face long delays and disputes over final approval by the Public Design Commission (as the long fight over the privately-sponsored suffrage monument in Central Park demonstrated).

An obvious solution would be to increase staff and funding for the Percent for Art program, but the new financial situation may prevent that option. Another route could be to relax the institutional requirements, but that might trigger even more accusations of ignoring public input. 

With only twenty months left in the Mayor's term, not one of these twelve monuments has even begun consideration at the Design Commission. It is uncertain what can be achieved. Reassessing some of the fundamental choices in the monument initiative seems wise. 

The spirit of the initiative remains important, and Finkelpearl’s vision, and that of his co-chair of the Monument Commission, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, should be praised. But we must critique the expedient implementation that neglected subject experts and locals.

Good luck to Commissioner Casals in finding a way forward.

Todd Fine is a PhD Candidate in History at the CUNY-Graduate Center.