What Should Be Done With All the Empty Confederate Monument Plinths?
TEXT BY GUELDA VOIEN
Posted September 11, 2017
... Perhaps the model case lies in Britain. In London, an empty plinth became a source of national pride, an always-changing public monument and continual source of intellectual engagement after 150 years of controversy.
The four plinths on each corner of Trafalgar Square were supposed to hold statues of British kings and generals. But the last one, constructed in 1841, never got its intended equestrian statue of William IV after funding dried up. For a century and a half, Britons debated what should top the fourth plinth, before opting in 2003 to give the park to the city and the plinth to a worthy artist to be chosen each year to sculpt a new commission.
Currently, the Fourth Plinth holds Really Good, a sculpture in bronze by David Shrigley. The work is a gigantic thumb pointing skyward in a gesture the artist says he hopes will become a "self-fulfilling prophecy," and get citizens to reframe their idea of what constitutes as *"bad," according to a statement on .. London’s website ...
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/confederate-monument-plinths
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