In 1902 as requested in his last will and testament, British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes was buried atop a granite hill in Zimbabwe’s world-famous Matobo National Park. Almost 120 years later, the site of his grave has become increasingly contested in light of his intimate involvement with colonisation and… Read More
Nicknamed the ‘Slaughterer of Banda,’ the figure of Jan Pieterszoon Coen has become increasingly contested in recent years. The statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen in Hoorn has been a disputed monument since its unveiling in 1893. The statue has been smeared with red paint and graffiti numerous times in… Read More
The late nineteenth century saw the systematic killing of the Selk’nam indigenous group members at the hands of European settlers in Punta Arenas, Chile. Until 2007, the official state narrative surrounding the fate of the Selk’nam failed to recognise the genocidal dynamics underpinning the dramatic decline in their population. Read More
On 21 June 2021 plans were confirmed for the removal of the statue of Theodore Roosevelt, which had been standing outside the American Museum of Natural History since 1939. The eventual decision to remove the statue came after years of debate, protests and multiple instances of vandalism. The decision… Read More
Ukraine By Olivia Durand May 2022… Read More
The statue of Sebastian de Belalcazar, erected in 1940 in Popayan, Colombia, was torn down in September 2020 during a wave of protests. Local indigenous communities had long considered the statue as the embodiment of the city’s colonial past, and a symbol of the continued impact on their lived… Read More
In autumn 2020 a bust of the 18th century King of Denmark and Norway Frederik V mysteriously disappeared from its pedestal at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It was later found to have been thrown into the canals of Copenhagen in a filmed protest by a group… Read More
Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter Protests, the statue of General Redvers Buller was reviewed by the Exeter City Task Force and slated for removal. This was due to Bullers controversial historical role in the South African War (1899-1902). This decision to remove the statue received mixed reactions and… Read More
A sculpture named A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, stands on Newington Green in London. It sparked controversy following its unveiling on November 10, 2020, as some argued that the depiction of the nude ‘everywoman’ failed to commemorate the proto-feminist philosophies of Wollstonecraft in a respectful manner. A lack of… Read More
In Central Park in New York, New York, a statue of physician J. Marion Sims was raised in 1934. Sims was credited with highly impactful procedures in gynaecology; However, many of these procedures were generated by conducting surgery on enslaved Black women without anaesthesia. Local activists began calling for… Read More
Plaza Baquedano at the centre of Santiago was traditionally the central meeting point for protests and celebrations in the Chilean capital. Since the outbreak of social protests in October 2019, the square and its monument became a central focal point. The protestors have tried to rename the square to… Read More
The Valley of the Fallen in Madrid was built in the 1940s by order of dictator Francisco Franco and, was in part, built by forced labour from political prisoners. Its aim was to be a mausoleum for victims of the Civil War from the Francoist side but at the… Read More