Baltimore Confederate Statues Head To Los Angeles Museum
Baltimore Confederate Statues To Be Exhibited At Los Angeles Museum
A Los Angeles museum exhibit will display four of Baltimore’s Confederate statues eight years after their removal.
According to WBFF, Baltimore’s Confederate statues will stand alongside removed Confederate monuments from Richmond, Charlottesville, New Orleans, and Raleigh. The exhibit, simply titled Monuments, is curated by Hamza Walker, Director of The Brick; Bennett Simpson, Senior Curator at MOCA; and Kara Walker. The exhibit is intended to “illustrate the evolution of the Confederate monument” as a way to honor the dead, to “its rise as a crystalline symbol of white supremacist ideology,” according to a statement from The Museum of Contemporary Art’s (MOCA).
The monuments will be displayed along with new, contemporary artwork. “By juxtaposing these objects with contemporary works, the exhibition expands the context in which they are understood and highlights the gaps and omissions in popular narratives of American history,” the MOCA’s website reads. The Monuments exhibit opens Oct. 23 and will have several educational seminars and programs alongside the Confederate statues on display.
Conversations about Confederate monuments have intensified over the last decade. In 2017, construction workers removed Baltimore’s Confederate statues in the middle of the night after the Baltimore City Council unanimously voted for their removal. The vote came only days after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where a white nationalist protest turned violent and resulted in the death of Heather Heyer. Nearly 200 Confederate monuments have been decommissioned nationwide, and Congress passed a law preventing future Army bases from being named after Confederate figures.
Of course, since this is America, there have been plenty of white folks decrying the removal of Confederate monuments as an “assault on history.” Unfortunately, quite a few of those folks currently occupy the White House. Former Fox News Host turned Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a staunch advocate for the preservation of Confederate monuments.
While the Biden administration renamed several Army bases named that previously carried the names of Confederate soldiers, Hegseth exploited legal loopholes to revert Army bases to their Confederate namesakes. This passion for history seems to be limited to the Confederacy, as Hegseth has removed the names of civil rights activists from John Lewis-class oilers.
This reversal on the removal of Confederate monuments can be seen at the state level as well. Virginia removed the names of Confederate generals from several schools in 2020, only to reverse course four years later. Last year also saw the Florida state legislature vote to prevent the removal of Confederate statues to “protect white society.”
I just think it’s kind of funny that the same type of people who lament the rise of participation trophies are often the same type of people getting worked up about monuments to a losing army. Moesha was on longer than the Confederacy existed and had a better theme song to boot. Everybody knows the Moesha theme song; I doubt even the staunchest white nationalists know the Confederate national anthem.
If I have to live in a world where Confederate monuments are displayed, I think an exhibit like Monuments is the best case scenario. It acknowledges the history of the Confederacy and recontextualizes the monuments as the symbols of white supremacy they’ve come to represent.
SEE ALSO:
John Lewis Statue Replaces Confederate Monument
Black NC Residents Targeted After Confederate Statue Removed
