"Violence Beyond Sims: White Aesthetic Victory and Monumental Public Art"

• In Event: What We Do With What Remains: The Politics of Reimagining the Past and Resignifying the Present

Abstract

On April 17th, 2018, a statue of J. Marion Sims, the so-called American “father of modern
gynecology,” who gained renown through brutal experimentation on his enslaved assistants, was
hoisted from its stone plinth in Central Park, New York, while members of the local East-Harlem
community, who had been campaigning to have the statue removed since 2008, cheered. The
removal of the bronze figure was a victory for the growing movement against memorializing
heroes of the American Empire and other perpetrators of violence who continue to be honoured in
public even while their accomplishments are gained from human exploitation and suffering.
Dialogue between community members, city representatives and cultural workers about the
sculpture’s removal and potential replacement (through a call for a new public artwork) presented
an opportunity to contribute to a significant shift in the cultural narratives shared in public space.
However, when the replacement for the Sims monument narrowed to a decision between two
artworks – the jury’s choice or the community’s – the process revealed a complex and deeply
engrained attachment to (what Addison Gayle Jr. calls) the mainstream “white aesthetics” of public
art. This paper considers the Sims monument – from its commissioning in 1892 to its removal and
the competition for its replacement – as it is framed by imperialist aesthetic languages of allegory,
conquest, sacrifice and permanence. These languages invite us to celebrate a limited definition of
humanity and a semblance of diversity without altering the hierarchies of taste culture and the
resilient structures of exclusion established by colonialism and white supremacist culture. This
story of monuments, public art, and aesthetic reparations is a reminder that the counter-monument
movement must go further than simply toppling figures made of stone and bronze: how can we
disentangle the intimate and insidious bonds between systemic violence and the field of
representation?

Author

• Hadley Howes, Queen's University