BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!

Subject: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 03:35 PM

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A 118-year-old statue of the "Oh! Susanna" songwriter was removed from a Pittsburgh park Thursday after criticism that the work is demeaning because it includes a slave sitting at his feet, plucking a banjo.

In October, the Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to take the Stephen Foster sculpture out of Schenley Plaza and find it a new home. For now, it will remain in a storage lot, out of the public view.

On Thursday, workers used straps and construction equipment to lift the 10-foot-bronze statue off its base. It was strapped to a flatbed truck and taken away.

The Giuseppe Moretti statue was completed in 1900 and thousands attended its dedication.

The shoeless banjo player is based on "Uncle Ned," a fictional slave and subject of a song by the same name. Critics have long decried the statue as racist.

"It's the single most offensive display of public art in Pittsburgh, hands down," Paradise Gray, a hip-hop activist, musician and writer, told the Post-Gazette in August . "It permanently depicts the black man at the white man's feet."

Others say it highlights that Foster was inspired by black spirituals. Some historians contend the 1848 song is actually an early, subtle anti-slavery song.

A statue honoring an African-American woman will be put up in its place. Residents can submit nominations.

Foster, a Pittsburgh native, is often called the father of American music and was known for enduring tunes from the 1800s.

His songs include "Camptown Races," 'My Old Kentucky Home," 'Beautiful Dreamer" and "Old Folks at Home" (Swanee Song).

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 03:42 PM

Yeah, well - that's what a history of slavery and racism does, doesn't it? Maybe when all that is long forgotten, they'll put the statue back.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: keberoxu
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 08:57 PM

That old a statue! Back in the day, completely different songs
would have been popular.
I've seen the sheet music for Old Ned, which is a dirge:
"he's gone where the good darkies go."   Squirm.

There are surely ways to recall Foster without the minstrel aspect.
Marilyn Horne was not ashamed to use "Beautiful Dreamer" as an encore.
There is actually a different lyric/tune
titled "Thou Art the Queen of my Song" which is very effective,
if characterized by the sentimentality popular in his time.

If not a better statue, at least a better image, would be appropriate.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: olddude
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 09:14 PM

Just put up a better statue how about just foster that would be the right thing to do

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 09:19 PM

Gee, that's a tough one we have lots of Stephen Foster Songs here, and many of them are terrific songs. "Uncle Ned" is a good song, but I can't imagine singing it.

I sing "Old Black Joe," "Old Dog Tray," and "Hard Times Come Again No More." I occasionally get challenges about "Joe," but not the others.

The Stephen Foster Folk Culture Center State Park* is on Interstate 75 at the crossing of the Suwanee River north of Gainesville, Florida. The park visitors' center is a replica of a plantation house, and it's full of miniature dioramas depicting Foster's best-known songs. I'm sure it was cute in the 1950s, but now it seems grossly inappropriate.

It's too bad that such a wonderful composer wrote songs so imbued with the racist culture of his time. He had contemporaries like Henry Clay Work who were able to keep away from that, but Foster is an embarrassment.

-Joe-

*I swear it used to be called the Stephen Collins Foster Memorial State Park - this "folk culture" part of the name is new to me. It's the home of the annual Florida Folk Festival, which I really enjoyed the one time I attended with Harpgirl.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Apr 18 - 11:25 PM

It wasn't intentional, but as I was listening to various audiobooks last fall, two I heard in sequence were Margot Shetterly's Hidden Figures, with an exemplary history of how African Americans were treated after slavery in mostly Southern states, and then Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning Underground Railroad. It was a serendipitous, but remarkable, passing of one text over another, resulting in an appreciation of the topic that touches on the disposition of these statues.

Try it yourself. I dare you.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:04 AM

In many ways, it's a very nice statue, but IS a representation of a black man who is in an obviously subservient position.
Here are photos: (click)

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:40 AM

a statue to a guy who died in the Bowery having collapsed in an alcoholic haze having squandered a fortune and his talent?


Stuff of folk hero worship in some quarters.

Let the songs live, tweak them maybe, but make them live.

but

re-write history so mankind (oooooh person-kind) forget reality and the dangers thereof. Why not. The truth is too painful to deal with.

What a nation needs is a monument to the truth. But then they interpret, how it suits best their evangelism. That's art for you, it's not what the artists say it is!

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Tiger
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 08:27 AM

Maybe, for a while, we can stop looking for racists behind every tree, and just listen to the music.

I sing "Uncle Ned" and find it a very moving and respectful song. Of course, the lyrics I learned from the 1950 Burl Ives recording started out with "There was an old brother ..." which raises the acceptability index considerably. Try it that way, and see if you agree.

Foster should be appreciated for his huge contributions and influence and not be denigrated for his use of the vernacular. If that's your gripe, go after hip-hop.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: John Moulden
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 09:54 AM

The application of modern attitudes to the actions of people who lived in a completely different cultural climate, is to my mind, dangerous - it airbrushes history instead of using it to understand how it and the present should always be questioned - is it fair, is it just, is it well argued - but to put it into storage is to beg every question that can and should be asked.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 10:49 AM

It might just be my own peculiarity,
but I think statues erected to memorialise the 'great and good' are a stupid waste of money...

A really crap one was plonked in the middle of my home town..
A very costly vanity project for a local councillor with a bee in her bonnet...
The statue was bad art - nothing of any value - the 'artist' probably gave the lowest tender for the job...???

The great individual being raised on a pedestal barely had any remotest connection to our town..

They might just as well have picked Winston Churchill if he had spent an hour or 2 in a broken down train in a local railway siding...

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 11:59 AM

Mr. Red's opening sentence threw me off, actually, in his post,
because I thought of Edgar Allan Poe.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 12:31 PM

Looking at the photo Joe posted, the banjo players position doesn’t look in any way "subservient" to me He's sitting while he plays, but what does that mean? Pretty well any banjo players I've run into sits while they are playing. If he didn't have "black" features (of course the actual colour of both figures is exactly similar) would anyone really see that pose as "subservient"? (Is it really that possible to be subservient while playing a banjo? It's about the most in-your-face instrument that exists.)

Not so much about this statue, but about a wider point. Is there a danger that when awakened awareness of a history of racism leads to getting rid of evidence and reminders of how blatantly open it was, that is not so much because of shame, but rather because of mere embarrassment? Reminders can serve a real purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: mg
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 01:03 PM

I would split statues in two. Put them in different areas. Both are nice.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 01:26 PM

Looking at the pictures, it's Stephen Foster who looks awkward, perched in an uncomfortable position, looking as if he is liable to fall off any minute. The banjo player is sitting comfortably and at ease.

If the face was Pete Seeger's, say, would any think that the man was seated subserviently? And it’s a good head on that statue, it wa made with respect for the sitter, and implicitly for the music he's making. Stephen Foster looks a bit of an afterthought.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 01:48 PM

I agree that it is a fine statue. However, if the local Black citizens in general are hurt and offended by it, then take it away. Bring it back when the pain of racism is a distant memory.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 02:03 PM

Pathetic, small minded idiots.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 02:33 PM

Considered on its own, I see nothing wrong with the statue. But taken in the context of the nationwide campaign by the Ku Klux Klan and others to whitewash the history of slavery and the Confederacy, the statue becomes objectionable. This campaign to glorify the South ran from about 1875-1940. To my mind, the Foster statue is an ancillary casualty in the current campaign to remove vestiges of the earlier Ku Klux Klan whitewash campaign.

Seen in that context, I think it makes sense to remove the statues.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 02:45 PM

I'd suggest a national park gallery of withdrawn contentious statues,
with a multi media educative program spotlighting each statue in it's historic and cultural context...
Also, online and in person outreach work tied in with schools, colleges, and universities.

Free entry would be cool.. but I'm sure a reasonable ticket price would be acceptable..

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:13 PM

You know - commemorative statues, no matter how contentious, are just not all that exciting. Take the school kids to the zoo.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:22 PM

Why can't we have gigantic national monument statues of Penguins...

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:24 PM

Too formal?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:26 PM

just recently they've put a statue of the late Queen Mother in Dorchester. its jet black.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 09:06 PM

Meself says: You know - commemorative statues, no matter how contentious, are just not all that exciting.

You've got a point there. Before people got all hot-and-bothered about Confederate statues, the only ones who seemed to care were the pigeons. I always found some justice in finding pigeon crap on all the statues of our racist, manifest destiny heroes.

We Americans don't really have many heroes. They're all tainted by racism and manifest destiny, and pigeon shit.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Rapparee
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 09:10 PM

. A statue where I used to work. It's made from melted and recast firearms.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 04:42 AM

I think there's a lot to be said for keeping statues life sized, and at ground level. Like this one of Paddington Bear, Or this one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, both from Paddington Station in London.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: The Sandman
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 05:42 AM

Could we have a park of commemorative statues to White Elkephants?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 11:36 AM

These
would be more appropriate statues to be erected close to Parliament...


more

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 01:34 PM

On my cross-country trip in the fall of 2016, I spent the night in Rapid City, South Dakota, between the Black Hills and the Badlands. The downtown district has a statue on every corner, all these bronze people waiting for the traffic light to change. They have statues of most or all of the U.S. Presidents on their street corners, and other figures, too. It's kinda cool.

Springfield, Illinois, capitalizes on Abraham Lincoln, and there are statues of Honest Abe all over the place. I sat down next to Abe on a park bench in downtown Springfield. Oh, and there are great statues of Lincoln and Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois, the site of their first debate.

-Joe-

Subject: ARE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 02:24 PM

Here's a great statue you can sit next to any time you're in my family town of Cahir in Tipperary. Maybe they could move that banjo player over to Ireland and sit him down there and they could have a session.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 02:49 PM

You can help this fellow finish of his chess game in downtown Calgary ....

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 02:50 PM

Whoops! Didn't come out exactly the way I wanted - but scroll down a bit and you'll see him.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Apr 18 - 08:25 PM

Anyway, I hope that statue with Stephen Foster and the banjo player gets put in a decent place where people can see it. This is as good a portrayal of a music maker as I've ever seen. Wouldn't you love to run into him in a session?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: meself
Date: 30 Apr 18 - 09:28 PM

I agree - and I suspect the artist was much more excited about doing that part of the monument than about doing Foster, which(who) is bland and work-a-day by comparison.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 30 Apr 18 - 09:54 PM

Perhaps you'd have to live in the U.S. and have some sense of our difficult racial history to be able to appreciate how offensive that statue must be to most African-Americans and many non-blacks. It certainly shouldn't be displayed in public.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Allan Conn
Date: 01 May 18 - 02:32 AM

Best statue I've been to was the Connemara Giant in Ireland. Not because it is a wonderful statue. It isn't - but it was a laugh. We drove about 20 miles into the middle of nowhere just to see this bloody thing and when we got there this was this statue of a giant with the plaque reading something like the following - though sorry I can't remember the actual date is uses "on this spot in the year ???? absolutely nothing happened".

We had quite an amusing time just watching tourists trying to work out what it was all about

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 May 18 - 06:18 AM

Look at that face of the banjo player, gillymor, and find something offensive in it.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Donuel
Date: 01 May 18 - 07:00 AM

In this cultural revolution we won't be sent to re education camps however it does work on some Klan and Nazi sympathizers.

Do you know where your little Red Book is?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 01 May 18 - 07:15 AM

Mac, "that smiling face" on that happy "darkie" serves to perpetuate a myth, still extant in some quarters, mostly the American south, that blacks are base ignorant animals and were better off as slaves. Reading antebellum slave journals should dissuade anyone from that notion.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 May 18 - 08:27 AM

He looks like most banjo players I've met, gillymor. I'd be reluctant to say that they look like base ignorant animals.

I'm not criticising the decision to shift that statue from its existent site, that's their business and they've given fair reasons. But I think that it's a pretty good statue, especially so far as the banjo player is concerned, and deserves to be treated respectfully.

Maybe some researcher could hunt down who was the model for that figure. He looks like a very real person whose name might be tracked down.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 01 May 18 - 08:55 AM

Once again, maybe you have to live in this country and actually know some American blacks to be aware that anything that glorifies, wether it's intentional or not, the long, brutal, bloody plantation era in this country is highly offensive to them and hopefully anyone else who is aware of this dark time in our history. Statues are not nuanced historical essays they are stark symbols designed for visual impact and don't come with instruction manuals. The last I time I checked the city of Pittsburgh can't even give this thing away.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 01 May 18 - 10:04 AM

My wife is mortified that her elderly aunty in Wales
still has plaster cast figures of jolly stereotype black people
outside her front door..

Are UK garden centres still selling these gollyesque little statues
on the same shelves as more traditional garden gnomes...???

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 May 18 - 12:59 PM

One odd thing is, there's no suggestion whatsoever in Stephen Foster's song that "Uncle Ben" played the banjo.

I gather that opposite the former site of the statue there is a sizeable Stephen Foster Memorisl arts centre and museum, part of the University of Pittsburgh. Is this under threat?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 May 18 - 12:59 PM

One odd thing is, there's no suggestion whatsoever in Stephen Foster's song that "Uncle Ben" played the banjo.

I gather that opposite the former site of the statue there is a sizeable Stephen Foster Memorisl arts centre and museum, part of the University of Pittsburgh. Is this under threat?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 May 18 - 02:37 PM

A group of statues have recently been erected in the Deep South, here in the U. S.; they are part of a memorial museum/historical society exhibit.

These are African-American figures who represent the families torn apart by lynching. So one sees husbands and wives, parents and children,
in the most vivid emotional expression.

I'm nowhere near this event, but the news media did stories on it.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Donuel
Date: 01 May 18 - 02:47 PM

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/legacy-museum-opens-montgomery-alabama-highlight-slavery-lynchings-n869686

first statues up in defiance of the Confederacy. It took some time.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Hrothgar
Date: 02 May 18 - 04:47 AM

Why did they not just remove the black man?

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 May 18 - 05:44 AM

(I wonder if we will ever get like that in England.
God knows Victorian factories with their long hours, brutal overseers, non existent safety regulations and murderous effects on life expectacy must have been quite as bad as plantation work. I suppose the people weren't slaves - but it was certainly one fuck of a life for most people.

And yet we tend to honour these industrialists. We restore their hell hole factories to look like cathedrals.In living memory our politicians have received standing ovations asking for a return to Victorian values.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 May 18 - 08:30 AM

At least up North they have statues to real heroes...

Billy Fury and Eric Morecambe...

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 May 18 - 08:31 AM

What, those English factories that bought the Southern cotton, to turn the blood and sweat of American slaves into British trade goods?

Be careful- there are those here that would treat you less than kindly.