06.15.2020 - By Ian Elsner
In the wake of the racist murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol tore down a statue of Edward Colston, a prominent 17th Century slave trader. Protesters rolled the statue through the street and pushed it into Bristol Harbor — the same harbor where Colston’s Royal African Company ships that forcibly carried 80,000 people from Africa to the Americas used to dock.
In this episode, we examine the relationship of statues and museums. Why do so many call for statues of people like Colston to end up in a museum instead of at the bottom of a harbor? Looking at examples from Dr. Lyra Montero’s Washington's Next! project in the United States, American Hall of Honor museums for college football teams, and statues of Lenin and Stalin in Eastern Europe, we discuss the town-square-to-museum pipeline for statues.
Image: CC Keir Gravil - Black Lives Matter Protest, Bristol, UK
Topics and Notes
00:00 Intro
00:15 Tim Tebow Statue at the University of Florida
00:50 Football Hall of Honor Museums
02:02 Tearing Down Edward Colston’s Statue in Bristol
02:44 Dr. Lyra Monteiro
03:00 Episode 77. Washington's Next!
03:12 The “Slippery Slope” Argument
04:56 Dr. Sadiah Qureshi
05:33 Should Colston’s Statue End Up in a Museum?
05:58 Episode 5. Stalinworld
06:42 Grūtas Park
07:32 Episode 25. Museum of Socialist Art
08:20 Museums of Bristol Website
08:40 Number of Confederate Statues in the United States
09:55 Archipelago at the Movies : National Treasure is Now Free for Everyone
10:25 Outro | Join Club Archipelago
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