{"id":15746,"date":"2025-10-21T11:42:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/15746\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T11:42:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T11:42:09","slug":"removed-confederate-monuments-are-redefined-in-moca-brick-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/15746\/","title":{"rendered":"Removed Confederate monuments are redefined in MOCA, Brick exhibition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the past decade, Confederate memorials<\/a> have been a flashpoint in America\u2019s heated culture wars. More than 150<\/a> statues and monuments were doused with paint, defaced and brought down by protesters, but in President Trump\u2019s second term, they are being reinstalled. A statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike is returning to Judiciary Square in Washington, D.C., and another, known as the \u201cReconciliation Monument,\u201d will be restored to Arlington Cemetery.<\/p>\n

The tumultuous state of affairs is supercharging a provocative, highly anticipated new exhibition titled \u201cMonuments,\u201d featuring nearly a dozen removed statues, some towering up to 15 feet. The show, co-organized and co-presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick, opens Thursday and runs through May 3, 2026. <\/p>\n

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\u201cMonuments\u201d was originally supposed to debut two years ago, and if it had, it would have entered a radically different political landscape. <\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly everyone thinks that we\u2019re doing this in response to our president, which isn\u2019t at all the case. This is more a case of the political moment coming around to capture us,\u201d said MOCA senior curator Bennett Simpson, who organized the show alongside Brick director Hamza Walker, artist Kara Walker (no relation to Hamza), Brick curatorial associate Hannah Burstein and MOCA curatorial assistant Paula Kroll. <\/p>\n

The urgent, raw and ongoing nature of the public debate around civil rights, made all the more incendiary by the Trump administration\u2019s attempts to minimize the history of slavery by threatening to remove artworks related to it at the Smithsonian and national parks, contributes to the power of the exhibition, which juxtaposes the statues with art that elicits emotionally charged responses. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an associative poetic art show,\u201d Simpson says of the 18 participating artists.<\/p>\n

At MOCA, a statue titled \u201cConfederate Women of Maryland,\u201d erected in Baltimore by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, features two women \u2014 one of whom is cradling a fallen male soldier in her lap in a tableau resembling Michelangelo\u2019s \u201cPiet\u00e0.\u201d This monument resides directly across from a series of photographs by John Henry featuring Black mothers similarly holding their sons in urban environments. <\/p>\n

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A statue of Matthew Fontaine Maury in MOCA\u2019s \u201cMonuments\u201d exhibition. Maury is considered the father of modern oceanography. He also wanted to expand slavery to Brazil.<\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Some, such as a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were splattered in paint by protesters. Others, including the base of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, were covered in graffiti with phrases like \u201cProtect Black Women.\u201d They appear in the museum just as they looked when they were removed from parks and plazas in Richmond and Charlottesville, Va., respectively. Davis now rests on his side in a room with a group of chilling photographs taken by Andres Serrano of hooded Ku Klux Klan leaders in Georgia.<\/p>\n

A statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney \u2014 who in 1857 wrote the majority opinion in the notorious Dred Scott case, which ruled that slaves could never be citizens and were thus property \u2014 sits beside a statue of prominent newspaper owner Josephus Daniels, who helped foment the 1898 Wilmington massacre in which a mob of more than 2,000 white supremacists killed as many as 300 people in the course of overthrowing the city\u2019s duly elected biracial government.<\/p>\n

Across from these frozen-in-time relics is a wall of studio portraits of Black North Carolinians taken in 1910 by photographer Hugh Mangum, whose contact sheets of both Black and white people show that he ran an integrated studio in the Jim Crow South. The people in the proud, haunting photos would have been alive during the Wilmington massacre, Simpson noted. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt important for him to meet his public,\u201d Simpson said, gesturing at Daniels.<\/p>\n

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1. Documents and photos illustrating the creation of an equestrian statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which was removed from a park in Charlottesville, Va., and has been reimagined by artist Kara Walker in the exhibit \u201cMonuments\u201d at the Brick. 2. Studies and inspiration used by artist Kara Walker. (Etienne Laurent \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n

Hamza Walker first conceived of \u201cMonuments\u201d when the statues began coming down in the wake of the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The hate crime, which targeted Black people, resulted in nine deaths and sparked a mass movement against the veneration of figures who fought to perpetuate slavery in America. <\/p>\n

What to do with the country\u2019s many Confederate statues and monuments had become a matter for debate. Some people thought they should remain untouched, with added plaques addressing the history of slavery. Others felt they should be destroyed. <\/p>\n

Hamza Walker wanted to use them in an art exhibition and ask artists to respond. <\/p>\n

For the most part, the removed statues were tucked away out of sight. The pieces featured in \u201cMonuments\u201d are on loan to MOCA, trucked in on tractor trailers from whatever obscure location they were stored \u2014 hidden under tarps in water treatment facilities and stashed in warehouses alongside bags of salt and snow plows. <\/p>\n

Getting the monuments proved to be a time-consuming undertaking, made all the more so by their controversial nature. After the city of New Orleans took down four statues in May 2017, a fierce backlash erupted, culminating in the infamous Charlottesville rally in August. For two days during what is now called \u201cthe Summer of Hate,\u201d white nationalists and neo-Nazis carrying tiki torches, swastikas and Confederate flags filled the streets. A man rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a 32-year-old, and President Trump famously declared there were \u201cvery fine people on both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cMonuments\u201d curators spent countless hours writing detailed proposals about how they intended to use the statues, which, for the most part, have to be returned. They needed to give assurances that the pieces would be treated with care, insured and protected from harm.<\/p>\n

A single monument is housed across town at the Brick \u2014 it is set in relief because it stands in a category all its own, said Hamza Walker. The sculpture, Kara Walker\u2019s \u201cUnmanned Drone,\u201d is the only monument that has been physically altered. <\/p>\n

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1. A detail of the horse\u2019s nostril on Kara Walker\u2019s reimagined Stonewall Jackson sculpture. Walker used a plasma cutter to take the statue apart and weld it back together in an entirely new way. 2. A detail of the sword on Kara Walker\u2019s sculpture. Jackson\u2019s other arm is detached from his body. 3. Jackson was hit by friendly fire during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1893 and had his arm amputated before he died. Jackson was so revered that his arm had its own grave. (Etienne Laurent \/ For The Times) <\/p>\n

Walker used a plasma cutter to slice apart a statue of prominent Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, which she welded back together in an entirely new form. Jackson no longer has a face, but his hair is speared by a portion of his horse\u2019s upper thigh. The horse now appears to be standing upright with its head protruding from the back of its saddle. Jackson\u2019s arm, which was amputated before his death, is now separated from his body and affixed to the edge of the statue\u2019s base. His legs are sliced open, and his saber rests on the ground beside the dissected, reconfigured whole.<\/p>\n

The effect is breathtaking and violent. <\/p>\n

\u201cIdeologically it\u2019s an affront, aesthetically it\u2019s an affront … on a piano, it\u2019s not just a chord, this is a tone cluster,\u201d said Hamza Walker, of the reimagined statue. \u201cKara went for it. She did what artists do in terms of marshaling an energy and force, and then concentrating it on this object and coming up with this piece.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statue was deeded to the Brick \u2014 which wrote a competitive proposal to get it \u2014 for the sole purpose of transformation. This is because the statue, by virtue of its recent, ugly history, had become radioactive, Hamza Walker said.<\/p>\n

That history is detailed in photos, newspaper articles and letters at the Brick. The year after the Charleston church massacre, a young Black woman, Zyahna Bryant, petitioned the city of Charlottesville to remove its statues of Jackson and Lee. In the midst of her efforts, the city became the national focal point of ongoing American racism as Unite the Right protesters gathered around Lee\u2019s statue in Market Street Park.<\/p>\n

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1. Hank Willis Thomas\u2019 installation \u201cA Suspension of Hostilities\u201d at MOCA\u2019s \u201cMonuments.\u201d The 1969 Dodge Charger from the TV show \u201cThe Dukes of Hazzard\u201d is named General Lee. 2. Karon Davis\u2019 sculpture \u201cFound Cause\u201d shows the artist\u2019s son holding a small Confederate horse by its tail. (Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mask is off, right? These things are now straight-up toxic, there\u2019s no going back,\u201d Hamza Walker said of the Charlottesville statues, explaining that the city\u2019s mandate was to get rid of them, not to just put them in storage. \u201cThat\u2019s what distinguishes Charlottesville from other places.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2023, the city gave its Lee statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, which spearheaded a project to melt the 10,000-pound statue and use the resulting bronze ingots for an entirely new piece of art.<\/p>\n

Kara Walker\u2018s sculpture seeks to take the focus off Jackson and put it on his horse, a trusty steed named Little Sorrel that Jackson valued for his bravery in battle. Jackson died from his wounds eight days after being hit by friendly fire while returning to camp during the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. He attained saint-like status in the South, which surrendered the Civil War two years later. Little Sorrel was also revered. The red war horse lived to a ripe old age and was trotted out for special events. True believers took patches of Little Sorrel\u2019s fur, and upon its death, the horse was taxidermied.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the nature of this object, what do you do with it?\u201d Hamza Walker said of the Jackson statue. \u201cYeah, here\u2019s your monument back.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Andres Serrano\u2019s series \u201cGreat Titan of the Invisible Empire\u201d at MOCA\u2019s \u201cMonuments\u201d exhibit. The 1990 portraits feature Ku Klux Klan leaders in Georgia. <\/p>\n

(Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past decade, Confederate memorials have been a flashpoint in America\u2019s heated culture wars. More than 150…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[13570,13566,13567,1409,13563,13564,418,13569,13565,48,52,51,47,50,49,1594,592,13568,13571,3750,13562],"class_list":["post-15746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-artist-kara-walker","tag-brick-exhibition","tag-charlottesville","tag-city","tag-confederate-monument","tag-hamza-walker","tag-history","tag-horse","tag-jackson","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-other","tag-people","tag-piece","tag-simpson","tag-slavery","tag-statue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}