In New York Central Park, they want to demolish monuments to men and replace them with statues of women

A member of the commission of New York, which oversees the art and architecture of city property, proposed removing men's monuments in Central Park and installing statues of women who had contributed to history in their place. Writes about it New York Post.

“There are five or six male statues in the park that I think can easily be replaced with female statues,” said Willis Thomas, a sculptor working for the Public Design Commission, at a hearing at City Hall.

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There are currently 23 statues in the Central Park, and all are for men.

Thomas proposed replacing the statue of the Scottish poet Robert Burns and the statue of Christopher Columbus.

But New York Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to support the idea. He is “for” adding new monuments, but against demolishing the existing ones.

De Blasio sparked controversy over the possible demolition of monuments, such as the statue of Columbus, creating an advisory group to review monuments in five districts of the city.

In the end, the group offered to remove only one statue from Central Park - Dr. J. Marion Sims of the 19 century, who was experimenting with enslaved black women.

Meanwhile, a group of consultants proposed combining two statues into one to show both sides of the story. They proposed to do this with two women rights activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony - but this idea was rejected.

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This idea was not supported, since there was no black woman in this statue, so it was proposed to add a third woman - a black activist in the fight for women's rights - Sojourner Trut.

The city's design commission said the triple monument was not a good idea, even though all three women were fighting for the same cause. Therefore, the idea appeared to make separate monuments to women who made a huge contribution to history.

At this point, Thomas suggested demolishing men's monuments and replacing them with women's ones.

Joseph Schiam, president of the Sons of Italy Foundation, said: “I don’t think it’s necessary to remove someone’s statue”, and also supported the installation of “statues in honor of clearly underestimated people, statues that for some reason or other have never been presented before to society. ”