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A towering monument of General Robert E. Lee, formerly a flashpoint for unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been transformed into a collection of molten bronze, now exhibited in a Los Angeles museum.
Adjacent to the sculpture are receptacles filled with toxic “slag,” the byproduct of the smelting process.
Nearby stands a substantial equestrian statue, defaced with graffiti, depicting Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, prominent Confederate generals during the U.S. Civil War. The Confederacy’s defeat in 1865 ultimately led to the abolition of slavery in the United States.
“They fought for slavery,” states curator Hamza Walker, who spent eight years navigating legal challenges and logistical hurdles to acquire and transport these weighty monuments to Los Angeles. The artifacts weigh tens of thousands of pounds combining bronze and granite.
“The notion of glorifying these figures is problematic. What were their beliefs? They espoused white supremacy, unequivocally.”
Amidst President Donald Trump’s directives to reinstate Confederate statues and paintings, the exhibition “Monuments” grapples with conflicting interpretations of American history. The exhibition, which opens October 23 at The Brick and the Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art, puts these issues at the forefront.
The 18 decommissioned Confederate monuments are displayed alongside contemporary artworks. The massive statue of Lee and Jackson stands near a full-scale replica of the “General Lee” vehicle from the television series, “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
President Trump has often praised General Lee’s valor. He and others have been critical of the removal of Confederate monuments, describing it as historical revisionism.
White nationalists rallied in Charlottesville in 2017 to prevent the statue’s removal, resulting in deadly clashes. The aftermath saw similar conflicts erupt in cities across the U.S. over Confederate symbols.
“Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed,” President Trump stated in a March executive order calling for the reinstallation of paintings and monuments.
Walker argues that placing Lee and Jackson on pedestals, despite their defeat in the war, is inherently racist. He says that it promotes the “Lost Cause” ideology, which posits that the Civil War was a noble defense of states’ rights, not a battle over slavery.
“States’ rights to do what? The Civil War was fundamentally about slavery,” he asserts, adding that portraying the South as a “noble victim” downplays the horrors of slavery.
“By distancing them from slavery, they can be depicted as heroes, even though they were on the wrong side of history, fighting for a morally reprehensible cause,” he explains.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is “Unmanned Drone,” a reimagined sculpture of Stonewall Jackson by artist Kara Walker (no relation to Hamza Walker). The work depicts Jackson’s horse and rider as a headless, spectral figure.
“The Southern vernacular would be a ‘haint,’ which would be a ghostly form,” Kara Walker told the BBC when asked how she describes the work. “It’s an attempt to rethink the legacies of Stonewall Jackson as a mythology, as mythological holder for white supremacy.”
Most of the displayed monuments will be returned to their respective cities and towns after the exhibition concludes in May. However, Kara Walker’s sculpture will require a new home. Furthermore, the bronze ingots derived from the melted Lee statue will be repurposed into a new artwork.
The statue was removed in 2021 and melted in 2023, following a vote by the Charlottesville City Council to donate it to the Jefferson School – African American Heritage Center.
“It’s a toxic representation of history, this lost cause narrative, and we’re purifying it,” says Jalane Schmidt, an activist and professor who witnessed the statue’s removal in Charlottesville and its melting at a secret foundry. She traveled to Los Angeles to view it in its new form.
Schmidt recounts that living in Charlottesville, the statue was a constant presence until a teenage girl initiated a petition in 2016 to rename Lee Park and remove the statue, deeming it offensive that the city would honor someone who championed slavery.
The statue became a focal point for the Unite the Right rally in 2017, which tragically resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist, when a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.
Schmidt says the petition and the rally changed public opinion about the monuments in Charlottesville and elsewhere.
“Especially after Unite the Right, after we were attacked, well, clearly this was evidence that, you know, people are willing to die for symbols, but they’re also willing to kill for them,” she said. “We had to remove them just for our own health.”
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