A group of activists splashed red paint on the base of the statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History early Thursday morning.
“Now the statue is bleeding,” the Monument Removal Brigade wrote in a statement posted online. “We did not make it bleed. It is bloody at its very foundation.”
Paint was also put on the exterior of the museum. It was removed hours later.
The group, among other advocates, is calling for the removal of the statue of the 26th president on horseback, flanked by statues of a Native American and an African-American.
“The statue is a stark embodiment of the white patrician supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted and is an affront to all who enter the museum,” the group Decolonize This Place wrote in a letter to the museum and the mayor earlier this month.
The incident comes as the city takes a closer look at statues and monuments thought to be controversial. Mayor Bill de Blasio created a commission to review monuments on city property for “symbols of hate” following the deadly protest of the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August.
Co-chair of the commission and Department of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl said in a statement that “there’s no place for vandalism in this conversation.”
The Monument Removal Brigade, however, argues that its actions were not vandalism.
“This is not an act of vandalism,” the statement said. “It is a work of public art and an act of applied art criticism.”
The group has also demanded that City Council rename Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day, and others have called for the removal of statues of the Italian explorer around the city.
One of those statues, in Central Park, was vandalized in September, with red paint and the messages, “Hate will not be tolerated,” and “#Somethingscoming” written on the base.
A tourist walking by the AMNH Thursday morning said the controversial statues shouldn’t be vandalized or removed.
“Of course it’s not good to award people who have done things in the past, but if you remove all bad guys’ statues, nobody will recall what they have done,” John Favier, 46, of France, said. “The story is more complex than having two people of color on either of side of Theodore Roosevelt and him being above them. You need to know what’s behind the story of the statues. Instead of vandalizing, maybe they should write what the person has done, good or bad.”
No arrests were made Thursday, police said.
With Rajvi Desai
