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It's important to understand the history of the statue before you jump to conclusions. Roosevelt was a long time champion for the Natural History Museum and th
by q1w2 5y ago
It's important to understand the history of the statue before you jump to conclusions.
Roosevelt was a long time champion for the Natural History Museum and the research it did in the natural world. He funded expeditions for the museum heavily, and then himself led a huge expedition into the Amazon to discover and map one of the main tributaries to the Amazon river, deep in the uncharted South American jungle.
This statue represented that specific expedition, and the people next to him represent those that HELPED his expedition. The creator wanted to INCLUDE them in the historical narrative. He's on a horse because they also wanted to capture a major part of his, unrelated, personal history as a member of a famous cavalry unity that had fought in the war against the Spanish.
It was a peaceful expedition of scientific exploration, not colonial exploitation. In the end, they found the tributary and mapped it, and brought back various nature samples to the museum for study - despite all nearly dying of starvation and contracting malaria.
There is actually a great book describing the expedition called The River or Doubt [1].
...but of course Twitter mobs know better based on their 3 second hot-take, and now we have to dumb-down history for everyone.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darkest/dp/0767913736 https://www.amazon.com/River-Doubt-Theodore-Roosevelts-Darke...
- tptacek 5y agoI don't think this is really true at all. Roosevelt's elevation above the lesser races and cultures, and by extension the elevation of Roosevelt's culture, was the intent of the sculpture. Fraser was by no account a virulent racist --- he'd spent time out in the frontier west, and was apparently deeply sympathetic towards Native Americans (he's also the designer of the Buffalo nickel!). But he's unmistakably building on the idea of Native Americans as members of a defeated culture, celebrated in their pacified decline and allowed to quietly vanish off the Earth. Again: we don't so much have to guess about the ideas captured in this work; lots has been written about it. It's modeled after a Renaissance sculpture depicting a ruthless mercenary general. It depicts something like a Roman Triumph --- which, notably, Roosevelt actually held at his inauguration, with conquered Native American chiefs marching to celebrate his victory --- long before the Amazon expedition. I think a problem you're running into here is that you're evaluating Roosevelt and not the statue. I'm sure there's someone who wants to get rid of the Equestrian Teddy because they hate Teddy, but for the most part, the problem is with the sculpture itself and what it's saying, not with some historical assessment of Roosevelt himself.