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“Denies Consent and Context”
“The board of the TR Library believes the Equestrian Statue is problematic in its composition. Moreover, its current location denies passersby consent and context,” it said in a statement. “The agreement with the City allows the TR Library to relocate the statue for storage while considering a display that would enable it to serve as an important tool to study the nation’s past.”
The statue was commissioned in 1925 to stand on the museum’s steps, since Roosevelt’s father was one of its founders and Roosevelt himself was a “devoted naturalist and author of works on natural history,” as the museum’s website explains.
But it adds that the design itself “communicates a racial hierarchy that the Museum and members of the public have long found disturbing.” Roosevelt’s legacy — especially his views on race and support for the eugenics movement — has also come under wider scrutiny in recent years.
On October 17, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary George B. Cortelyou sent a letter to Secretary of State John Hay. At Roosevelt’s direction, Cortelyou asked Secretary Hay and his staff to change “the headings, or date lines, of all official papers and documents requiring his [Roosevelt’s] signature, from ‘Executive Mansion’ to ‘White House.’” Similar directives were sent to other cabinet secretaries, and Roosevelt changed the presidential stationery shortly thereafter as well.
