Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy

Discover how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed.

Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy explores monuments as flashpoints of fierce debates over national identity, politics, and race that have raged for centuries. Offering a historical foundation for understanding today’s controversies, the exhibition features such objects as a fragment of a statue of King George III torn down by American Revolutionaries; a souvenir replica of a bulldozed monument by Harlem Renaissance sculptor Augusta Savage; and a maquette of New York City’s first public monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. The exhibition reveals how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed. Curated by Wendy Nālani E. Ikemoto, senior curator of American art

For more information, please e-mail travelingexhibitions@nyhistory.org

Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Tour Schedule

Fairfield University Art Gallery, September 19 – December 31, 2025

Binghamton University Art Museum, February 27 – June 14, 2025

Highlights

Augusta Savage created her signature work, Lift Every Voice and Sing, for the 1939 World's Fair. The 16-foot sculpture was destroyed at the fair's end but survives through small-scale replicas like the one shown here.

Alison Saar's Swing Low: Harriet Tubman Memorial is the first public monument to an African American woman in New York City. This maquette is a study for that monument to the celebrated abolitionist who escaped slavery in 1849.

Johannes Adam Simon Oertel's oil painting Pulling Down the Statue of King George III, New York City (ca. 1852–1853) looks back to a defining moment in US history: After listening to a public reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 9, 1776, Continental soldiers joined with patriotic New Yorkers in Bowling Green to tear down an equestrian statue of King George III.

Exhibitions at The New York Historical are made possible by Dr. Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, the Saunders Trust for American History, the Evelyn & Seymour Neuman Fund, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. WNET is the media sponsor.

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Monuments: Commemoration and Controversy

Discover how monument-making and monument-breaking have long shaped American life as public statues have been celebrated, attacked, protested, altered, and removed.

Tour Schedule

Highlights

Champion History

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