In August 2018, the Victoria City Council’s decision to remove a statue of Sir John A Macdonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, from outside the City Hall sparked controversy due to the lack of transparency in the public consultation process. This case study explores how public consultation can shape the… Read More
On February 6, 2020, a historical plaque marking the site of a slave auction went missing in Charlottesville, Virginia. For some residents, the removal of the plaque revived complaints about the inadequacy of the memorial; others felt the removal erased Black history. Five days later, police arrested a local… Read More
In the Spring of 2020, the Prague 6 Municipality removed the monument to Marshal Konev from Náměstí Interbrigády (International Brigade Square). The statue had a long history of contestation and was eventually removed in 2020 following a successful petition campaign the previous year. During these thirty years, many actors… Read More
Mexico City was the only city known to have two statues of Cristopher Columbus. Themonuments were both 19th-century statues placed within walking distance of each other – inPaseo de la Reforma and Calle Buenavista, in the heart of Mexico City. Given its visibility andposition in a heavily trafficked street,… Read More
The ‘Victory Monument’ in Riga, imbued with the historical memory of World War II and thelegacy of Soviet rule, has been the subject of a long-standing contestation in Latvian society.While some view it as a symbol of Soviet victory against Germany in World War II, othersregard it as a… Read More
The legend around the figure of Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, popularly known as Mbuya Nehanda, an anti-colonial leader and spirit medium, revolves around the interplay between the Zimbabwean pre-colonial past and its neo-colonial present. The government initially proposed dedicating a statue to the woman in Harare’s capital city. However, as… Read More
In June 2020 the chairman of Afrosvenskarnas riksförbund (the Afro-Swedish National Federation) called for the removal of a statue of Gustav III, the king who brought Sweden into the transatlantic slave trade and made Sweden a colonising power through his purchase of the Caribbean island of Saint-Barthelémy in 1784. Read More
Henryk Jankowski was an eminent cleric in Poland renowned for his role in the anti-communistSolidarity movement during the 1980s. After the fall of communism in the 1990s, he becamefamous for his outspoken attitude. During his sermons, he would make political comments andanti-Semitic remarks that stirred controversy in Poland. After… Read More
In 1941, Japan occupied Malaysia in the context of World War II. That same year, they built a stone monument in Alor Setar to honour three Japanese soldiers who were killed while securing the city’s bridge to cut off Allied troops. The restoration of the memorial in 2019, officiated… Read More
The Brotherhood in Arms monument was the first post-Second World War monument placed in Warsaw in Vilnius Square. The public contestation of the monument began after Poland gained independence in 1989, although grievances against it might have been aired within opposition circles in prior years, too. After the exit… Read More
Filipina Comfort Women was a statue erected on 8 December 2017 along Baywalk, Roxas Boulevard, in Manila. The contestation began days after the statue’s installation with a request for background information by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs and Communication Seiko Noda later regretted… Read More
In the years after the Confederate States of America (often referred to as the ‘Confederacy’) lost the American Civil War in 1865, several groups established memorials to Confederate leaders across the South. Five Confederate statues were erected on Monument Avenue in Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy and… Read More