Updates
January 22, 2022: is it time for the Smithsonian and all other American natural history museums remove their "dinosaur" exhibits? Dinosaurs, without question, are the poster "reptiles" for fossil fuel.
January 22, 2022: from The New York Sun, editorial.
This is the week in which the statue of Theodore Roosevelt begins its journey to the Badlands from its pedestal in front of the American Museum of Natural History. Let us just say that New York’s loss will be North Dakota’s gain.
The statue had come under fire as “a racist work of public art,” as a mayoral advisory commission described it. It’s hardly a “Square Deal” for TR, who did more than most in his day for racial equality.
When the statue was unveiled in 1940, a New York Times editorial applauded Roosevelt’s taking “his place in enduring bronze among the monuments of this city that he loved.”
The Times predicted “few, passing the newly dedicated statue and noting the firm, up-tilted chin and the eyes fixed on a far distance, will doubt” TR “would have met present problems face-forward, with high courage and clear decision.”
Eighty years later, “present problems” have dictated a change of plans. The museum recently lumped the statue among other “powerful and hurtful symbols of systemic racism” subjected to scrutiny amid “the movement for racial justice that emerged after the murder of George Floyd.” Evicting Roosevelt is a symbol of “progress toward an inclusive and equitable community,” the museum claimed.
As of this week, the statue is on the way to the planned Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, population just north of 130. The journey parallels Roosevelt’s own trek to hunt bison in the Dakota Territory.
That was in 1883, when “he was a skinny, young, spectacled dude from New York,” as the National Park Service puts it. His stint in the Badlands was transformative for the future president.
Original Post
This simply has to be the coolest thing ever.
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