The Victory Monument in Bolzano was erected on the orders of Benito Mussolini in 1928. Since then, it has been at the symbolic centre of ethnic clashes between the German- and Italian-speaking communities and a symbol of the unresolved legacy of Italian Fascism. Until recently, the monument has been one… Read More
Kristen Visbal’s iconic Fearless Girl statue has been the subject of heated and ongoing contestation since its installation on New York’s Wall Street in 2017 and its subsequent relocation. Controversy arose over the significance and suitability of its original positioning opposite Arturo Di Modica’s Charging Bull (1989). The statue also… Read More
On the night of January 9, 2021, students protested outside of Jaffna University against the university’s decision to destroy a memorial commemorating the Tamil victims of the three-decade-long civil war. The war ended in 2009 at Mullivaikkal, a small village in the northeast coast, and the memorial was erected ten… Read More
The Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II in Washington, D.C., United States, is a monument to the 112,581 Japanese Americans incarcerated by the U.S. Government during World War II. It also commemorates Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. Military. The inscriptions in the memorial received criticism… Read More
In 1936, the Dutch fascist party NSB constructed a complex in the town of Lunteren called Mussert’s Wall (Muur van Mussert), where they would hold political rallies. After being neglected for decades after World War II, in 2015, a national discussion arose following requests by local and national heritage organisations… Read More
In 2015, a citizen advisory committee including several Indigenous activists proposed that ‘Lake Calhoun’—christened for John C. Calhoun, antebellum politician, slavery advocate, and proponent of the Indian Removal Act—be restored to its original Dakota place name, ‘Bde Maka Ska’, meaning ‘White Earth Lake’. What followed was a contentious legal battle… Read More
The death of Francisco Franco in 1975 brought to close a painful era in Spanish History. In 2007 Spain enacted the Historical Memory Law, which formally condemns the Franco Regime and mandates the removal of public tributes to Franco. His statue in Melilla was one of the only remaining depictions… Read More
The Isted Lion, created to commemorate the Danish victory in the 1850 Battle of Isted, has been the subject of German-Danish debates about national and cultural identity in the historically contested Schleswig border region since it was first erected in 1862. This case study examines the journey of the statue… Read More
In 1932, German citizens gathered for the dedication of the Kolonialelefant in Bremen. The Bremen Colonial Society created this monument in memory of the German soldiers who died in the German colonies during the First World War. As well as to glorify colonialism and bolster the neo-colonial movement (after… Read More
Germany By Berklee Baum March 2022… Read More
In 1967, an equestrian statue of Belgian King Leopold II, the owner and absolute ruler of the Free State of Congo from 1886 to 1908, was taken down and discarded on the outskirts of Kinshasa, in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of President Mobutu’s postcolonial re-indigenising policy. In… Read More
After 30 years since the statue of Tunisia’s first president Habib Bourguiba was removed, it returned to central Tunis in June 2016. The return of the statue was intended to be a grand gesture of patriotism, around which all Tunisian’s could unite. It became clear, however, that the move was… Read More