Charleston has been asked to loan its statue of John C. Calhoun to a Los Angeles exhibit that will place Confederate and related monuments that have been taken down together, in dialogue with works of contemporary art. The exhibit's curator, Hamza Walker, explains the project and how the Calhoun statue could fit into it, and a member of Charleston's Commission on History weighs in on why conversations about the statue weren't over when it came down.
In Charleston and in communities across the country where Confederate and related monuments have been removed, there’s still a big question left to be answered: What should be done with them now?
For the last several years, Los Angeles-based curator Hamza Walker has been working on an exhibit that will gather some of those monuments in the same place, displayed and in dialogue with works of contemporary art.
Tentatively called “Monuments,” the exhibit will debut in fall 2023 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
They’re approaching local municipalities, asking to borrow these monuments for the exhibition, and, in the process, stirring up some difficult, but necessary, discussions about these monuments, their legacies and what these communities are going to do with them now that they’ve been removed from their public pedestals.
Charleston is one of those communities.
The city has been asked to loan out its statue of John C. Calhoun for the exhibit.
Calhoun was a fierce defender of slavery, and the city’s decision to remove the 12-foot-tall bronze statue to him in Marion Square, came after weeks of protests over the death of George Floyd.
Now, a year and a half after its removal, the statue may out of view, but the question of what to do with it still looms.
This episode was hosted and edited by Emily Williams. Guests featured on today's episode are Emma Whalen, city of Charleston reporter for The Post and Courier; Michael Allen, a retiree of the National Park Service and a member of Charleston's Commission on History and Hamza Walker, director of LAXART.
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