The Jefferson Davis Statue on Richmond, Virginia’s Monument Avenue is one of the most notorious monuments of oppression. It came into widespread public focus during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. However, for several years before those protests, museums and archives around Richmond proposed plans for reinterpreting or removing the monument.
After protesters defaced and toppled the monument, the Black History Museum of Virginia acquired the statue. The Black History Museum then loaned it to the The Valentine Museum where they redesigned into an exhibit.
Christina Keyser Vida, Curator of General Collections at The Valentine, joined us for our July 2022 webinar, “Oppressive Monuments in the Museum Space.” In the webinar, she talked about The Valentine’s process for reinterpreting the Davis statue into its exhibit. Rather than focusing on the former Confederate President’s life or legacy, their exhibit instead focuses on the history of the Black Lives Matter protests, Jim Crow-era racism, and the history of monuments themselves, including the Lost Cause myth. The museum found it most important to preserve the statue in its damaged form rather than as a monument. In the exhibit, the statue remains covered in paint and laid on its side.
In October, the Monuments Toolkit kicked off our new social media campaign to provide a weekly highlight of a monument that has been removed, relocated, or reinterpreted. We used the Jefferson Davis statue to start this post series. This was both in part due to the statue’s notoriety and in part to honor and recognize The Valentine, the Black History Museum of Virginia, and all other stakeholders’ work over several years to build a consensus in the community around how to best handle this monument of oppression.
We will continue to highlight these removed, relocated, or reinterpreted monuments within our toolkit. You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/ X, LinkedIn, and BlueSky to see our other highlights.
Photograph courtesy of Julia Rendleman/ The Valentine Museum.