Jefferson Davis Monument
President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis is memorialized on Monument Avenue. (Photo by Josh Rinehults/Getty Images)
Stick with me on this one.
We’re traveling into the philosophical realm to get a glimpse of Richmond’s future.
For this issue, Senior Writer Harry Kollatz Jr. spans the globe, asking what statues and the colossal shadows they cast mean, at this very moment.
Why do they remain? And what does that say about us?
Inspired by the work he saw in a 2015 exhibition, Harry weaves the stories of monuments in Paris; New Delhi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Montgomery, Alabama, with ours, talking with present-day philosophers, artists, curators, historians and theologians to assess our collective psyche.
Statues “are about the fragile nature of power.”
As we worked on this piece, I continually thought about the recommendations that the Monument Avenue Commission will make to the mayor and City Council by the beginning of July, and the first one that I would make.*
I kept going back to the work by the Raqs Media Collective that Harry includes in his piece.
In 2016, one of Raqs’ artists, Monica Narula, shared what the group came to realize about statues:
“They are about the fragile nature of power — the constant panic at the heart of power considering its fraught, frayed and often fraudulent claims to legitimacy.”
Raqs’ 2015 art installation “Coronation Park” was a series of nine unfinished fiberglass statues that represented the anxiety of power; it was “a provocation to think about the inner life of power, and its deepest anxiety: the inevitability of abdication.”
As a nation, we’ve had a “regime” change.
We’ve had a “regime” change in the city.
And in November, we saw the start of a possible “regime” change in the commonwealth.
We are in the in-between: the erosion of power and the building of power.
What will win out and what will be vanquished?
The world is watching.
What message will be sent about the now in Richmond?
*If I were to make just one recommendation, the statue of the leader of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, would be dismantled this summer and the space filled with a small sign noting its removal date by the city of Richmond. That first step would speak loudly.