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Mary Beard and Simon Goldhill just finished a Cambridge webinar on "Statue Wars — Controversy and Debate" comparing ancient use and abuse of statues to what's happening now. Here's some of my takeaways - many brilliant points and a few big disagreements!
Is a statue somehow closer to a human than to a lump of stone? Does it have powers over us? MB and SG traced long history of these beliefs, pointing to, e.g., the many ancient Greeks who fell in love with the Aphrodite of Knidos.
SG: if you've ever felt the urge to touch a statue in a museum, you understand why the ancients thought they had special powers/ blurred the lines between the human and non-human.
SG thinks political statues are meant to function in the same way as statues of beautiful bodies - they're meant to arouse interest and emotion. (Here's my fav emperor statue, Trebonianus Gallus in the Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247117).
MB proposed that the issue is still troubling us - is this a hunk of metal or a slave trader?
(She noted that the Romans, being “canny old bastards,” would probably have just changed the inscription on Colston's statue to say "Winston Churchill" and left it at that.)
What's the right way to use statues? MB said that no one has ever called themselves idolatrous – it’s always someone else, over there, who doesn’t understand how to use images. SG: we see this impulse today – we try to distinguish ourselves from others who use statues differently
They said public statues let a city represent itself to itself. Who belongs in the city? What are our values? Eg, the ancient Athenians defined themselves as a democracy by displaying a monument to the Tyrannicides - didn't matter that Thucydides told them it was a fake story).
So, what about toppling statues? SG: since public images are a way for a city to create a self-image, looting is a way to destroy this self-image. Gives example of Persian attacks on Athenian temples/statues - they even stole the Tyrannicides monument.
I, though, don't think this is what's going on with current protests. Protestors aren't attacking America - they're demonstrating that America's public image, as displayed in monuments, doesn't include everyone.
SG described the “real, valid hatred” that toppled statues of Stalin and Lenin, claiming it was an expression of "real unrecognized harm here.” I'm not entirely sure he meant to imply that there's not harm or real, valid hatred for enslavers, but...
MB describes statues as things for us to argue with - said when she walks in London, she'll often stare into the eyes of a statue of some bloke and think “you didn’t want me to have the vote, did you?" - using the statue as a celebration not of them but of women.
SG described the AMNH's project of annotating its dioramas of Old New York to point out historical inaccuracies ( https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/theodore-roosevelt-memorial/hall/old-new-york-diorama) and asks why can't we put up a statue of Obama next to a statue of Lee instead of just tearing down Lee.
I would say that both MB and SG were thinking about the harms embodied in statues under protest as things that are now fixed, like women being able to vote. But I see protestors pointing to harms that are still very present, like the systematic racism that outlives slavery.
The webinar was being recorded, but I'm not sure if it will be available - will update if so! Anyway, thank you to Simon Goldhill and @wmarybeard for the discussion -
