Kehinde Wiley, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, and Vinnie Bagwell Are the Finalists to Replace NYC’s Controversial Monument to J. Marion Sims
A quartet of prominent black artists are in the running to
create a new public monument to replace the statue of J.
Marion Sims, the 19-century physician whose groundbreaking
gynecology research involved brutal experimentation, without
anesthesia, on unwilling black women.
The public has until the end of the week to weigh in on the
proposals, from Kehinde Wiley, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, or Vinnie Bagwell. The city’s Percent for Art program chose the finalists in
February and will make a selection at a public panel being held
Saturday, October 5, 11 a.m.–3 p.m., at the Museum of the City of New York.
Mutu, Leigh, and Wiley all currently have high-profile public
art commissions on view in New York City: Leigh on the Highline Plinth,
Mutu on the facade of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wiley at Times Square, with a
piece unveiled just this week.
For 124 years, the statue of Sims stood outside the Museum of
the City of New York, lionizing Sims’s medical achievements without
acknowledging the suffering of the enslaved women who served as his
test subjects, most of whose names are lost to history.
Various calls for the statue’s removal
were voiced over the years—including by Leigh herself at the
Creative Time
Summit in 2015. The community group East Harlem
Preservation spoke out against the work as early as 2007.
Yet despite the support of New York City Council speaker
Melissa Mark-Viverito, the New York City Parks Department refused
to take the monument down, saying “the city does not remove
art for content.”
But in 2017, cities around the country began reevaluating
public monuments
to the Confederacy,
after the deadly white supremacist march in Charlotteville,
Virginia. This added fuel to a growing movement calling for the
Sims statue to be torn down. That September, mayor Bill de Blasio
launched the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art,
Monuments, and Markers to review potentially problematic
public artworks, asking for the public to
weigh in about what to do.
Ultimately, the commission decided
against removing controversial monuments, opting instead to
add plaques providing
additional historical context for polarizing figures such as
Christopher Columbus. The only exception was Sims: the statue was taken down
in April 2018 and moved to the site of Sim’s grave in
Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
Here are the four proposals for the new artwork that will be
erected on the site.
Kehinde Wiley,
Untitled
Kehinde Wiley, Untitled
(rendering). This is one of four proposals being considered for an
artwork to replace the monument to J. Marion Sims, the 19th-century
doctor who experimented on slaves. Courtesy of the artist.
Wiley has proposed creating a new version of his 2014
sculpture Bound, which depicts three black women with
entwining braids. The new monument would portray the figures as
armored doctors, standing arm-in-arm as a sign of their combined
empowerment.
“Celebrating the strength and beauty of women, the statue will
stand as a symbol of collective empowerment, focusing on the
incredible achievements of a community over any single
individual,” Wiley in his statement.
Simone
Leigh, After Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey, Henrietta, Laure, and
Anonymous
Simone Leigh, After Anarcha, Lucy,
Betsey, Henrietta, Laure, and Anonymous (rendering). This is
one of four proposals being considered for an artwork to replace
the monument to J. Marion Sims, the 19th-century doctor who
experimented on slaves. Courtesy of the artist.
Leigh’s title itself is full of history. The names in it
reference Henrietta Lacks, the African American woman whose cancer
cells were unwillingly immortalized for research; Laure, the model for the black
woman in Édouard Manet’s famed
painting Olympia; and Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, the
only Sims subjects whose names were recorded.
“This sculpture simply represents a black figure at rest, a
contemporary response to a dearth of representation of black beauty
in Western Art,” said Leigh’s artist statement. It calls for
surrounding the 18-foot tall bronze work with holly hedges and a
bed of blue bells.
Wangechi Mutu, To Raise
a Dead Giraffe
Wangechi Mutu, To Raise a dead
Giraffe (rendering). This is one of four proposals being
considered for an artwork to replace the monument to J. Marion
Sims, the 19th-century doctor who experimented on slaves. Courtesy
of the artist.
For her proposal, Mutu envisions a 14-foot-tall bronze sculpture
of a person sitting atop a slain animal.
The piece is inspired by photographs, particularly “a recent
wave of big trophy hunting by wealthy Americans looking for that
feeling of conquering, destroying and consuming what is African,”
she explained in her artist’s statement. But the image also
references European and American exploration of Africa during the
18th and 19th centuries, when Sims was carrying out his
research.
Vinnie Bagwell, Victory
Beyond Sims
Vinnie Bagwell, Victory Beyond
Sims (rendering). This is one of four proposals being
considered for an artwork to replace the monument to J. Marion
Sims, the 19th-century doctor who experimented on slaves. Courtesy
of the artist.
An eternal flame would burn in the hand of Bagwell’s monumental
angel, a bronze statue that will stand over 18 feet tall, serving
as a progressive beacon.
“Viewers minds shall be quickened and their spirits lifted by
her presence,” said Bagwell in her artist’s statement.
“Victory’s gaze shall be casted upon fertile ground,
envisioning the growth of all who visit this sacred place.”
The post Kehinde Wiley, Simone Leigh, Wangechi Mutu, and
Vinnie Bagwell Are the Finalists to Replace NYC’s Controversial
Monument to J. Marion Sims appeared first on artnet
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