This article has been updated since it first appeared in print.
The Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument was removed from Libby Hill in 2020. (Photo via Adobe Stock)
It’s unlikely that Richmond’s Confederate monuments will leave the purview of the Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia anytime soon, according to a legal representative.
In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking the restoration of federally owned statues, but the monuments removed in 2020 were owned by Virginia, which transferred ownership to Richmond before the city donated the statues to local museums.
“The executive order does not impose any obligations on BHMVA to re-erect or display the monuments,” says Jennifer Morris of local law firm Morris Art Law.
In October, the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming it “arbitrarily and capriciously” disregarded its bidding process in giving the statues to BHMVA, effectively allowing the city to relocate the statues to a lot near the city’s wastewater treatment plant. A hearing was set for Aug. 26.
“The city of Richmond had the authority to donate the monuments to BHMVA, and the museum now has the discretion to decide what to do with them,” Morris says. “The city has relinquished all rights and obligations regarding the monuments.”
Several of the monuments, however, are headed to Los Angeles temporarily. “Monuments,” opening in October at The Geffen Contemporary at The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Brick, is recontextualizing the pieces “to foster critical dialogue about their historical significance and the ideologies they represent,” according to an announcement. Among the borrowed pieces are the Vindicatrix sculpture and granite base from the Jefferson Davis Monument (the Davis statue from the monument is owned by Richmond’s Valentine museum) and the Matthew Fontaine Maury sculpture and globe.
“Our stewardship of these monuments,” BHMVA’s executive director, Shakia Gullette-Warren, said in a statement, “is grounded in a commitment to ensure that objects once intended to glorify those who led the fight to enslave African Americans are repurposed in ways that foster critical reflection, healing, and deeper public understanding of America’s past, present, and future.”
