BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 May 18 - 04:49 PM

In principle that's right. In practice all too often the decisions get made as a kind of 'virtue signalling" on behalf of supposed targets. So there have been cases where Christmas Crib display have been challenged or even removed as offensive to Muslims,

This can even serve to stir up resentment against Muslims. And yet in fact there may have been no indication that such offence is felt, and indeed Muslims may have said they weren't in the least offended.

That's a general point - I'm not implying that in Pittsburgh the removal of the statue would not have reflected the wishes of the local black community.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 May 18 - 10:45 PM

A National Park or a museum(s) seems appropriate to me. Reminders of what we were- and perhaps still are- are important.

We have to remind ourselves that the offender does not get to decide what is offensive; that perception belongs to those offended.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: robomatic
Date: 06 May 18 - 09:21 PM

I need to clarify both for myself and the rest of you that the link refers to the original statue in Washington D.C. but a copy of that statue was donated to Boston and this is the statue I actually visited.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: robomatic
Date: 06 May 18 - 09:13 PM

I sure hope you meant to use the past tense, because in that very Wikipedia article I linked it says:

"Frederick Douglass spoke as the keynote speaker at the dedication service on April 14, 1876, with President Ulysses S. Grant in attendance.[13] John Cromwell, a Howard University historian, who was in the audience, reported that Douglass said the statue "showed the Negro on his knees when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.""

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Elmore
Date: 06 May 18 - 09:08 PM

Frederick Douglass isn't crazy about the memorial, and as 45 noted, we've been hearing a lot of good things about Douglass lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: robomatic
Date: 06 May 18 - 06:53 PM

Ayuh! It is the Emancipation Memorial. Apparently it dates back to Reconstruction Era, and was paid for by African Americans, but is controversial.

I ran into it purely by walking around.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: robomatic
Date: 06 May 18 - 06:44 PM

I recall a statue in downtown Boston of Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation. I think it also displayed a black slave in broken manacles. Gonna try to research this. . . and if there have been suggestions that it be taken down.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 May 18 - 02:41 PM

But of course the banjo player in the statue is not a costumed Blackface Minstrel. He's just a black man playing the banjo. (And in the time the statue was made it would have been quite probable that Giuseppe Moretti might have portrayed him as a Minstrel, and he didn't.)

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 06 May 18 - 11:28 AM

the black and white minstrel show was doing good business right up to the 1970's in England.

in fact i can remember people saying it was harmless fun, and those who found it offensive were rotten killjoys.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 03 May 18 - 04:11 PM

pfr- I'm not advocating the destruction of these monuments, if some one wants to display them on private property, without the use of public funds, that's their business. As for museums, I prefer the approach of the Legacy Museum mentioned above.

Noted, McGrath, but I disagree, I think monuments that commemorate the Minstrel Era, when blacks were depicted as lazy,sub-human, buffoons fit only for use as entertainers or as beasts of burden (an attitude that is still pervasive in some areas of this country) are just as pernicious as the statues that were erected to perpetuate the myth of the glorious lost cause and to demonstrate white supremacy. That Minstrel stuff went on right up into the 1930's to some degree and as a one time member of a large extended black family I can tell you it was not appreciated, to say the least. BTW, I'm not sure if you were implying it but it's not just black Americans that find these racist monuments offensive.

Now I've said all I have to say on this subject. I think we covered it pretty thoroughly on the Confederate Monuments thread not so long ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 May 18 - 01:11 PM

As I have said, removing this statue from its position is a reasonable thing to have been done in the circumstances. If black people in Pittsburgh see that the presence of the black banjo player in his seated position as implying subservience, or as carrying some message favourable to slevery, and hence as being offensive, that has to be accepted, and the statue had to be removed.

However I think it should not be seen in the same light as triumphalist statues elsewhere of generals who waged war to defend slavery. It shouldn't end up in a park of shame alongside them.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 03 May 18 - 09:16 AM

gillymor - I agree leaving them in place is too problematic for many reasons..
But I can't accept willful destruction either...

earlier in this thread I commented:

"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."

As an ex art gallery education outreach worker [a very long time ago...]
that to me at least, seems like a reasonable and positively constructive compromise proposal..???

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 03 May 18 - 08:55 AM

I can't see how leaving a statue in place that has been deemed too offensive for public display will, in your words, "clean a wound properly". That type of racist monument, and many others like it that are going down, has caused that wound to continue to fester for 150 years.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 03 May 18 - 08:28 AM

Maybe so. But I strongly suspect that the emphasis is far more likely to be about sanitising reminders rather than ensuring that they are effective.

This article from Atlantic Monthly in 2016
reports the establishment of what is evidently the first museum in America specifically about the slavery history of America.   It states that there are some " 35,000 museums
that memorialise our culture and history".

Too often in these kind of matters the watchword "Move On" is too readily applied. You need to clean a wound properly before you close it up.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: gillymor
Date: 03 May 18 - 06:48 AM

People will be reminded of the most shameful aspect of American history but thankfully not by some stupid uncle tom statue that sanitizes and glorifies it. Here's another link to the Legacy Museun in Montgomery, Alabama., that Donuel linked below, in case anyone missed it.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 May 18 - 07:36 PM

A real danger, Nigel. A new survey shows that 41% of Americans and two-thirds of 18-34 year olds don't know about Auschwitz.

People need reminding of the terrible things their ancestors did, or went along with.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 May 18 - 09:37 AM

Remembering the Santayana quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.", removing statues that 'glorify' slavery (whether they do or not) without replacing them with something equally memorable seems to risk coming to a state where slavery is not a past memory, but something which has never been considered.

Leaving the statues in place at least allows them to be discussed.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 May 18 - 09:37 AM

McGrath,

Not a bad idea, at all. Perhaps you can forward it to Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh Art Commission
http://pittsburghpa.gov/dcp/art-commission/index.html

The Art Commission works to improve the aesthetic quality of the City's public spaces. The Commission is comprised of seven members appointed by the Mayor, and each member represents a various discipline in the arts or design field.

The Art Commission is mandated to review the urban design, architectural, and landscape features of structures which are erected on or above land owned by the City. These are structures or landscapes which are within the public realm and under its control and in which City funds are invested; including parks and bridges. The Art Commission administers the review process, which includes preliminary and final approvals.

The Art Commission is also mandated to review all works of art owned by the City of Pittsburgh and also art works proposed to be acquired by the City.

For more information about the Art Commission, email Yesica Guerra, the Public Art & Civic Design Manager, at [e-mail].

Commissioners

    Rob Indovina, Acting Chair
    Mark Baskinger
    Sarika Goulatia
    Kathryn Heidemann
    Kilolo Luckett
    Kary Arimoto-Mercer
    Andrew Moss

Ex-Officio Members

    Mike Gable
    Karina Ricks

For more information about the art commission, please see the Art Commission FAQ tab above.

Art Commission Hearings are open to the public. Community members are welcome to provide in person or written statements about items on the Art Commission agenda each month. To send written statements, write to Art Commission, c/o The Department of City Planning, 200 Ross Street, 4th Floor, Pittsburgh, PA 15222 or email [e-mail]

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 May 18 - 09:26 AM

Somehow I'm reminded of the story of the small boy taken to see a statue of General Gordon seated on a camel. He greatly admires it, and then asks "why have they got that man in a uniform sitting on General Gordon?"

I'd have favoured maybe detaching Stephen Foster, and moving him across the road to his Memorial, and keeping the man playing the banjo. And bringing him down to ground level perhaps.

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 May 18 - 08:56 AM

Donual,

How so? I noted that the Victorian factories ( mentioned as almost as bad as slavery) were based on the cotton from the American South, produced by slaves. Without US slavery, those mills would have been dependent on other sources- Like Egypt and India... Not that the English would mistreat their plantation workers, now would they?


And the wealth of the pre-Civil War North (US) was based on industry selling to the South, and until outlawed, on the slave trade.


But sure,let's let Pittsburg, PA be a symbol of the evils of the Deep South.
"Foster, a Pittsburgh native, is often called the father of American music and was known for enduring tunes from the 1800s."

Subject: RE: BS: Another statue down - Stephen Foster!
From: Donuel
Date: 02 May 18 - 08:42 AM

bbruce It sounds like you have been watching my cousin Gene Hackman, the Captain in Crimson Tide. Remember how they were both right and both wrong?

A demonstrator at a statue relocation of Robt.E Lee was killed and others injured yesterday. Crazy.

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.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: meself
Date: 28 Apr 18 - 02:49 PM

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

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Apr 18 - 03:24 PM

Too formal?