Statues embodying past values should not be allowed to continue to occupy public space in perpetuity. What we put on a pedestal should always ask new questions of the past. | OPINION by Nancy Cushing
An odd thing about statues is that they so often sit on or beyond the edges of our awareness. We walk or drive past them on our daily commutes without paying them any attention. They are part of the street furniture along with unremarkable benches, bollards and bins.
For those whose ancestors were harmed by these actions, the experience is very different. The statues are highly visible. Every encounter is a painful reminder of a time when people like them were considered to be lesser humans, and a suggestion that those views are still endorsed, not only in their embodiment in bronze or marble, but also in living hearts and minds.
Crowther secretly removed Lanne’s skull, replacing it with one from the dissecting room. His aim was to send the skull to the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London where it could be studied, along with other skulls of racially diverse people. The fall of Crowther won’t be anything like the boisterous toppling of the Edward Colston statue by a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol in June 2020. It won’t suffer the indignity of progressive mutilation or layers of graffiti like the now-removed Robert E Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia.
Sydney’s Centennial Park was once graced with 31 statues, including Abraham Lincoln and Charles Dickens. Many were removed over the years because of decay, changes to park roadways and vandalism. Some were replaced. None of this caused public outrage. It was recognised that statues were an element of the built environment among many, and that they would inevitably experience change.
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