The present day attack on statues is not unlike the attack on art, literature, film and history of people who do not live up to the values of 2020. It is like the attack on icons and on human depiction by Christians, Byzantines, and Moslems that went on for hundreds of years. It is a form of iconoclasm. Men held virtually sacred by past and present groups of people are now despised by others.
One of the men I've despised since first learning about him is Andrew Jackson
Nonetheless, I have no desire to deface or destroy his statue. The work is too well crafted, a work of art. It goes with the square and the history of New Orleans. I certainly get it that statues of Confederate generals with little or no aesthetic value, erected in the 1950s or 1960s as political expressions of a refusal to accept integration, should be removed or destroyed (or given to their descendants). But perhaps there are a few with real merit, made in the 19th Century that could remain somewhere with an appropriate plaque and commentary on the person's good and bad points. Do we really want to destroy the sculptures of famous Europeans like Napoleon or Augustus Caesar? And if so, what about the paintings of them, the images of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson? For that matter, don't we want to see the villains as well: Nero, Mussolini, Hitler? After all, don't we all have both good and bad traits? Even those we admire the most have traits that fall short of 21st C. values and attitudes. If we are going to continue to sculpt statues of those we consider heroes, perhaps we could focus on less controversial figures: artists, humanitarians, and the like...Keep the artistic statues in the sculpture sections of our great museums:
Hatshepsut
--Jameson
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