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43 Colum. J.L. & Arts 85 (2019-2020)
Bloody Foundation? Ethical and Legal Implications of (Not) Removing the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the American Museum of Natural History

handle is hein.journals/cjla43 and id is 89 raw text is: 











   Bloody Foundation? Ethical and Legal Implications of (Not)
   Removing the Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the
                 American Museum of Natural History

                            Sinclaire Devereux Marber*

   Now the statue is bleeding. We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation.

                               INTRODUCTION

   On  October  26, 2017,  protestors calling themselves  the Monument Removal
Brigade  (MRB)   splashed red paint on the base of a statue of Theodore Roosevelt
outside  the American   Museum of Natural History (AMNH, Museum, or
Natural History Museum)   in New  York  City as a form of public protest art.2 This
1939  sculpture by American   artist James Earle Fraser (the Equestrian  Statue of
Theodore  Roosevelt or Equestrian  Statue) portrays the twenty-sixth president of
the United States sitting upon a horse, flanked on either side by a standing African
man  and Native American  man  intended to represent their respective continents.3 On
its anonymous  blog, MRB   called for the statue's removal and claimed, [t]he true
damage  lies with patriarchy, white supremacy, and settler-colonialism embodied by
the statue.  The  Mayoral   Advisory  Commission   on City  Art, Monuments,   and


     *  Sinclaire Marber is a litigation Associate at White & Case LLP, New York. She received her
LL.M. in Intellectual Property from the London School of Economics, J.D. from Columbia Law School,
ALM  in Museum Studies from Harvard, and B.A. in the History of Art from Yale. She was previously
an Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts. The author would like to thank Professor
Tatiana Flessas for her supervision of the dissertation on which this article is based, and dedicate this
article to her late grandfather, the sculptor William Klapp. Any views expressed in this article are strictly
those of the author and should not be attributed in any way to White & Case LLP. White & Case means
the international legal practice comprising White & Case LLP, a New York State registered limited
liability partnership, and all other affiliated partnerships, companies and entities. This Article is prepared
for the general information of interested persons. It is not, and does not attempt to be, comprehensive in
nature. Due to the general nature of its content, it should not be regarded as legal advice.
     1. Prelude to the Removal of a Monument, MONUMENT REMOVAL BRIGADE (Oct. 26, 2017),
https://perma.cc/3ULA-HQBE.
     2. Colin Moynihan, Protesters Deface Roosevelt Statue Outside Natural History Museum, N.Y.
TIMES (Oct. 26, 2017), https://perma.cc/F7TZ-2FCT.
     3.  A.L. FREUNDLICH, THE SCULPTURE OF JAMES EARLE  FRASER 123 (2001); MAYORAL
ADVISORY COMM'N  ON CITY ART, MONUMENTS, & MARKERS, REPORT TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK (Jan.
2018), https://perma.cc/F63H-GSFN [hereinafter REPORT TO THE CITY OF NEW YORK].
     4.  MONUMENT  REMOVAL BRIGADE, supra note 1.

C  2019 Sinclaire Marber. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, which permits
noncommercial  use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source


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