Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers

The City of New York appointed the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers in September 2017. At this time, reviews had recently taken place in other municipalities, including those that considered contested confederate statues. One monument in particular provided a local impetus to the formation of the New York Commission. Located in Central Park, close to the predominantly Black and Latinx communities of East Harlem and El Barrio - a monument to Dr. J. Marion Sims was the subject of a campaign calling for its removal stretching across many decades. The commission considered four monuments in total, however.

In developing the review’s principles, the commission recognised a number of important issues. Firstly, that the need for dialogue on the legacy of the past and its effect on the future of the city was pressing and timely, in the context of the events of Charlottesville. Secondly, in contending with this legacy, the commission would consider the missing elements of the city’s narrative and take steps to redress the imbalance in the name of ‘truth telling towards the eventual goal of reconciliation’. The objective of the approach would be to develop a more complete reflection of the history of the city, a collective narrative, through a process of dialogue.

Thirdly, the commission accepted the value of knowledge in developing the fullest understanding of the histories that surrounded the memorialisation of particular figures and events, with the recognition that history is reinterpreted in the light of new testimony, particularly from previously disenfranchised communities. Finally, the commission determined that the principle of transparency would provide legitimacy to their recommendations and citizen testimony would be placed in the public domain so the people could understand how the commission used it to form its conclusions. In addition to the above contexts, the review was guided by five key principles:

• Reckoning with power to represent history in public
  Recognising that the ability to represent histories in public is powerful; reckoning with inequity and injustice while looking to a just future.
• Historical understanding
  Respect for and commitment to in-depth and nuanced histories, acknowledging multiple perspectives, including histories that previously have not been privileged.
• Inclusion
  Creating conditions for all New Yorkers to feel welcome in New York City’s public spaces and to have a voice in the public processes by which monuments and markers are included in such spaces.
• Complexity
  Acknowledging layered and evolving narratives represented in New York City’s public spaces, with preference for additive, relational, and intersectional approaches over subtractive ones. Monuments and markers have multiple meanings that are difficult to unravel, and it is often impossible to agree on a single meaning.
• Justice
  Recognizing the erasure embedded in the City’s collection of monuments and markers; addressing histories of dispossession, enslavement, and discrimination not adequately represented in the current public landscape; and actualizing equity.