Theodore Roosevelt statue removed from NYC museum after sparking controversy

A statue of US President Theodore Roosevelt that sat in front of a New York museum for nearly 80 years was removed this week after criticism over its “racial” image.

The sculpture, which was located at the American Museum of Natural History, featured the 26th president on horseback with a Native American man and an African man on either side of him.

A museum spokesperson told CNN in a written statement on Thursday the process of removing the statue was “conducted with historic preservation specialists and approved by multiple New York City agencies”. It will include a restoration of the plaza in front of the museum.

Removal began Tuesday and the sculpture was gone as of Thursday, after a year-and-a-half process.

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The museum first requested the statue be removed in June 2020, after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the global protests that followed. The Roosevelt statue now joins a number of other US monuments that have been relocated over the past few months. Most of these removals, if not all, were prompted by the 2020 protests.

“The statue itself communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing,” the museum wrote in its June request. This is conveyed in the statue’s composition: the white man, Roosevelt, is placed in the center on horseback while the other two men are behind him, walking.

That June 2020 request was approved by New York’s mayor at the time, Bill de Blasio. A year later, the New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously to remove and temporarily store the sculpture.